BY URSULA MILLER
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Untitled Article
This year's local Investors Fair, on Saturday, should prove to be especially memorable.
The guest speaker for the OKI Tri-State Council's eighth annual fair will be Ken S. Janke, president and chief executive of the National Association of Investors Corp.
Also of interest, local stockbroker and public radio personality Chris DeSimio, with Salomon Smith Barney, will air his weekly WXVU broadcast On the Money from the fair at the Sharonville Convention Center at 10 a.m. Mr. DeSimio will interview officials from some of the public companies sponsoring the fair.
NAIC is the Madison Heights, Mich.-based parent organization for investment clubs across the country. The popularity of investment clubs, in which members pool money to buy a portfolio of stocks, has grown dramatically in the mid-1990s. Fueled in part by the stock market's historic rise, the number of clubs nationwide has almost tripled to 35,947 since 1994.
Mr. Janke is well-known among club enthusiasts. He is perhaps best known for his ''Ask Mr. NAIC'' column in the association's monthly magazine, Better Investing.
Mr. Janke, 63, speaks from experience. He's been a member of the Mutual Investment Club of Detroit for almost four decades. The all-male club founded in 1940 has assets of $4.4 million today. Some of the club's members helped start the NAIC in 1951.
Mr. Janke also is co-author of NAIC's book, Starting and Running a Profitable Investment Club.
The five public companies sponsoring the fair are Emerson Electric, Libbey Inc., MCI Communications, Nokia Group and Swift Energy Co. Investor representatives will give formal, 40-minute presentations for each of the companies starting at 9:45 a.m. More than a dozen additional companies will have representatives at exhibit booths at the daylong event.
The fair starts at 8 a.m. Reservations are required by Wednesday. Tickets are $25 and include lunch. Call (513) 662-2212 or (937) 832-2942 for information.
USF&G likely to get name change after buy
St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co.'s pending $3.5 billion purchase of USF&G Corp. likely will cause a name change for a local closed-end fund.
USF&G Pacholder Fund, a high-yield junk bond fund based in Kenwood, incorporated USF&G into its name when the fund started in 1988. USF&G was Pacholder & Associates' first client, spokesman Jim Gibson said.
''It (USF&G) really launched Pacholder,'' Mr. Gibson said.
Using USF&G's name as part of the Pacholder fund helped create mainstream recognition among investors, Mr. Gibson added.
USF&G was one of Pacholder's first clients. The firm managed the high-yield portion of USF&G's investment portfolio until 1990. Baltimore-based USF&G started managing its investments internally at that time, but Pacholder kept the name for use in its fund.
USF&G, whose principal operating subsidiary is United States Fidelity and Guaranty Co., has seen its prospects for growth shrink in recent years as insurers race to buy or be bought in the current wave of industry consolidation. St. Paul announced its intention to buy the 102-year-old USF&G in January. The deal is expected to close by midyear.
Mr. Gibson isn't sure when Pacholder will have to drop USF&G from its fund name, but he said the change is inevitable. He said neither the buyout of USF&G nor any eventual name change will affect operations at Pacholder & Associates or its fund.
Renaissance Investment moving to Baldwin tower
Renaissance Investment Management is sending announcements this month to notify clients of its new home on the top floor of the Baldwin tower, across from Eden Park.
The firm recently moved from the old Taft Broadcasting building at 1700 Young St. in Mount Auburn. Renaissance moved into the 52,949-square-foot building in late 1989, amid a growth spurt. But business slowed in the early 1990s, and Renaissance didn't grow enough to fill the copious amount of space it had intended. The firm's owners put the building up for sale in 1995.
Renaissance's space at 625 Eden Park Drive is considerably smaller by comparison, covering 12,358 square feet.
Change has been part of life at Renaissance in recent years. The firm's partners sold majority ownership in late 1995 to Affiliated Managers Group in Boston. Affiliated is a publicly traded holding company of money management firms nationwide.
Renaissance, with about $1.4 billion in assets under management and 33 employees, specializes in quantitative analysis as an investment discipline.
Ursula Miller covers markets and investing for The Enquirer. She can be reached at 768-8573.
