Gregg Mattner has left Barclays Global Investors (BGI) where he was a principal who oversaw $60 billion in passively managed fixed-income assets. He says that when BGI made a decision last year to emphasize active rather than passive management and have him report to Peter Wilson, his fourth boss in 11 months, he became disenchanted with his role at the firm. "My most recent responsibilities were significantly different from what I was initially hired to do," he says. Mattner says he resigned. Calls to Wilson were referred to Tom Taggart, BGI spokesman, who characterizes the decision as a mutual one.
Prior to joining BGI just under three years ago, Mattner spent 12 years on the sell-side, where he ran the mortgage-backed pass through desk at Credit Suisse First Boston. Prior to that, he spent several years at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. He plans to spend a month traveling, before looking to return to fixed-income, most likely on the buy-side.
While sell-siders point to a "revolving door" among BGI management, Taggart says the firm has made three important hires in the last few months: Jim Gilliand, a portfolio manager, Teresa Kong, a high-yield analyst from OppenheimerFunds, and Eric Fifer, who works on investment technologies. "If there's a revolving door, we're hiring top people to replace the ones who are leaving," he says.