R. Lynn Yturri is a vice president and senior portfolio manager for Banc One investment Advisors Corp. in Phoenix. He was selected as an All-star Bank Proprietary Fund portfolio Manager in the one-year performance category for growth and income funds.
He serves as the fund manager for the One Group in come Equity and Large Company Growth Equity Funds. Mr. Yturri has 25 years of experience in the management of assets, most of this time spent with the former Valley National Bank trust investment department. Banc One acquired the Phoenix-based bank in 1993. Mr. Yturri is a well-known fund manager whose comments are often sought by the financial media. He had run the fund as a common trust fund since 1981. It was converted into a proprietary mutual fund in February 1992 and became part of the One Group on January 1, 1994. He describes the fund's investment philosophy as a top-down approach, looking for growth at a reasonable price. His advisory group uses a strategic future exercise, a formalized process that studies demographic, political, social, and economic trends in the investment context. The information is further broken down into several investment "themes," which, Mr. Yturri says, guide the investments of the Banc One funds managed in Phoenix.
"We never pay up for a stock or chase a trend. We want to be in a stock early before the industry or company is recognized by anybody else. We pretty much are looking to combine out-of-favor companies that have positioned themselves strategically or have undergone a fundamental change in their operations," he said,
One of his most recent successes using this theory had been the funds, early departure from consumer-sector stocks and early entrance into industrial-sector securities.
We used our in-depth research group to look at the re-engineering that was going on in the industrial sector. We knew that the American industrial sector was improving and this was a fact that was not well known. "We benefited from the surge in chemical, construction, and paper industries," Mr. Yturri said.
Mr. Yturri, an Oregon native, graduated from the University of Oregon in 1964 with a bachelor's degree in history. He also graduated from the University of Oregon Law School.
Banc One's interstate empire keeps him on the run in between managing the funds, but he thanks technology for keeping him in closer touch than was possible before.
"We use teleconferencing a lot, and several daily conference calls with the other analysts," he says.
Still, he manages to travel by air to Banc One's headquarters city of Columbus, Ohio, at least every other month.
