Friday’s Headlines: New Asset Management Firm Aimed at Hiring More Women

Former Invesco strategist Diane Garnick’s new venture has an ulterior motive. Clear Alternatives, an asset management firm which aims to raise $500 million by the end of the year, hopes to create senior management jobs for the top female graduates of the best business schools, according to a Businessweek article.

Garnick told the magazine: “One of the biggest challenges is for women to find an organization that’s willing to accept them back after they leave the work force to raise children without taking a cut in compensation and responsibility. Our objective is to solve that problem.”

Women make up just 18 percent of executive officers at Fortune 500 finance and insurance companies, while 43 percent of MBA graduates in 2010 were women. Garnick is launching Clear Alternatives with three other women and expects to grow to 12 women by the end of the year.

 

Other News:

The new, smaller Wall Street. [DealBook]

Investors in Q4 pulled out more cash from hedge funds than they put in. [WSJ]

Citi awarded 12 execs a total of $25 million in bonuses, including $3.7 million to chief Pandit. [Bloomberg]

Study finds 59 percent of advisors call themselves financial planners, while just 30 percent are qualified to do so. [Investment News]

Opinion: Days of easy money are over for active managers. [Investment News]

European insurers Axa and Ace are among final bidders for HSBC’s non-life insurance operations. [Bloomberg]

The junk investments that Credit Suisse gave employees in late 2008 as part of their bonuses have climbed 75 percent while the firm’s shares have declined 23 percent. [Bloomberg]

AmEx’s reported record annual profit as customer spending was up and defaults were down. [Businessweek]

CapitalOne’s Q4 profit was down on expenses. [Bloomberg]

Carlyle sold 18 million shares in China Pacific Insurance, raising about $57 million. [Reuters]

M&A guru Charles Cory returns to Morgan Stanley to lead a flurry of deals. [NY Times]

Last year saw the highest level of web start-up funding in 10 years, as $6.9 billion of venture capital invested in 997 Internet company deals. [Gigaom]

Hedge fund Barbican offered to take over Omega Insurance. [Financial Times]

Societe Generale layoffs signal an ailing French banking sector. [Businessweek]

Inside the @GSElevator Twitter account. [Financial Times]