A senior executive of the brokerage firm the ABA endorsed to help banks market mutual funds has left to work for a leading fund company.
James H. Rogan left Wall Street Investor Services late last month to take a post at Fidelity Investments. He is working for a unit of Fidelity that clears securities trades.
Wall Street Investor Services is a New York-based specialist in selling investments through banks. Until he stepped down, Mr. Rogan had been an executive vice president of the brokerage, responsible for developing business in the Northeast. No successor has been named.
Mr. Rogan said that his heavy traveling schedule had strained him and his growing family. At Fidelity, he said, he expects to spend most of his time in his New York office.
An American Bankers Association official said the personnel change doesn't worry the association. The ABA has been endorsing the firm since 1993.
Mr. Rogan said he had been one of several managing partners at Wall Street Investor. "I resigned my partnership," he said. He added that he remains on good terms with the company.
Eric Alexander, executive vice president and an owner of privately held Wall Street Investor, said Mr. Rogan had not been a partner, or managing partner, at the firm. He declined to comment further.
Mr. Rogan is no stranger to Fidelity. In 1992, he resigned from a job at Wall Street Investor to work for Fidelity, only to return to the New York brokerage in late 1993.
The brokerage firm, which sells investments through 83 banks, cut roughly one-tenth of its staff last September. Like other brokerages, its investment sales had been hurt by slumping stock and bond markets.
Kenneth Kehrer, president of Kenneth Kehrer Associates, Princeton, N.J., said Wall Street Investor's sales of mutual funds through banks had dropped by roughly 50% from the 1993 total, to $289 million in 1994.
The sales slump and the executive change are "not going to hurt (the firm's) program at all," said John C. Wolff, managing director of the Corporation for American Banking, the ABA unit that makes endorsements.
