Separate Account Manager of the Year Winner Steps Down

ICM Asset Management, which won inaugural separate account manager of the year honors from Investment Advisor, Standard & Poor’s, and Prima Capital in March for its small- to mid cap value product, announced that the portfolio’s lead manager, Kevin Jones, has unexpectedly left the firm. Jones quit on May 5, citing personal reasons. The Spokane, Washington-based firm’s president and chief investment officer, Jim Simmons, has assumed management of the product.

Simmons has served as the lead manager on the firm’s small-cap value product and had served as manager on the small- to mid-cap product from its inception in 1997 until 1999, when Jones took over. In a research alert to clients of the SMA Evaluator service it runs with S&P, Denver-based Prima noted that the small- to mid-cap portfolio has an estimated 60% overlap with ICM’s small-cap product. As a result, “we would not expect any changes to the product’s investment process,” Prima said. But because Jones “made the buy and sell decisions on the small- to mid-cap product,” added Prima, “his absence is obviously a concern.”