Hancock Brings Back Manager of US Global Leaders G

Aug. 14, 2003 — John Hancock Advisers has hired one of the former managers of J Hancock US Global Leaders Growth/A (USGLX) and his fellow stock picker to run the fund a month after it fired their old employer.

Hancock Advisers, the mutual fund unit of John Hancock Fin`l Svcs (JHF), said it retained George Fraise and Gordon Marchand to oversee the fund.

Hancock Advisers announced in July that it terminated Yeager, Wood & Marshall Inc. as the fund’s manager after Fraise and Marchand left that firm to start their own investment management company. The unit said at that time that it would manage the fund in-house until it selected another outside manager.

Fraise and Marchand had been members of the three-person investment policy committee at Yeager Woods; Fraise also served as a co-portfolio manager of the fund while at that firm.

Initially, Fraise and Marchand will be employees of Hancock Advisers, but the unit said it plans to formally hire their firm, Sustainable Growth Advisers, to serve as the fund’s outside manager. This “may take a couple of months,” the unit said.