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Wellington tells El Paso pension trustees of manager succession, duration stance and mortgage exposure
Summary
Wellington staff updated the board on firm scale and strategy changes, announced lead portfolio manager Joe Marvin will retire in June 2026 with Connor Fitzgerald named as successor, and described a longer-duration posture and increased agency-mortgage exposure.
Wellington representatives gave the El Paso City Pension Trust board a business and portfolio update during the meeting’s investment-manager presentations. Mary Ross, on Wellington’s relationship team, said the firm remains "a global asset management firm with 1,300,000,000,000.0 assets under management," and confirmed no material changes to firm structure since the last meeting.
Kara Burley, who works on Wellington’s core bond plus strategy, told trustees that lead portfolio manager Joe Marvin announced his retirement in June 2025 and will retire in June 2026; Wellington said Connor Fitzgerald will lead the strategy after Marvin’s departure. Burley reported the core bond plus strategy had about 21,400,000,000.0 in assets under management and year-to-date net inflows of 1,850,000,000.00.
On positioning, Burley said the fixed-income sleeve is positioned longer than its benchmark—"about half a year long relative to the benchmark"—with explicit overweights in the 10-, 20- and 30-year parts of the yield curve. She said the team added roughly 10% to agency mortgage exposure earlier in the year as interest-rate volatility eased and described weekly risk meetings and scenario stress tests: "We do that every week," she said.
David DeSilva, who presented the SMIDCAP research equity portfolio, described that strategy’s recent performance and structure. He said the portfolio draws on 57 global industry analysts and that market themes such as artificial intelligence, data-center buildout and the ‘‘low quality’’ rally have produced a volatile environment for small and mid-cap stocks. DeSilva said the firm sees both long-term holdings in some sleeves and higher turnover in analysts covering next-generation themes.
Trustees asked about duration, holding horizons and the role of oversight teams; Wellington said analysts have primary authority over their sleeves but are subject to oversight and periodic review by an internal oversight team. No formal board action was taken on the Wellington presentation.
The board moved on to subsequent agenda items after questions and answers concluded.
