Ascending the power curve

Wade Dokken is the enfant terrible of the U.S. variable annuity industry.

Over the last decade, he has helped build the Shelton, Conn., insurer into an annuity powerhouse – often by luring competitors’ customers.

Last May, Skandia Insurance Co. Ltd. named Mr. Dokken, 41, president and chief executive of its U.S. operation, American Skandia Inc., which generates more than half of the Swedish insurer’s overall earnings.

The promotion put Mr. Dokken in the spotlight and on InvestmentNews’ list of people whose power is ascending in the financial services industry. He’s joined by 10 other movers and shakers who didn’t make the Power Elite list but are rising stars in their own right.

In the immortal words of Ed Norton from “The Honeymooners,” “If you’re not prepared to go all the way [into the sewer], don’t put your boots on in the first place.”

These individuals not only have their boots on, but they also promise to lead the financial services industry into the 21st century.

Mr. Dokken is a case in point. He got his start in the securities business as a broker in Minneapolis with PaineWebber Inc. and joined Skandia in 1989 from Planco, now a subsidiary of Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.

Though Skandia stands as the variable-annuity industry’s 10th- biggest player based on assets it captured the top spot for variable-annuity net sales last year – attracting an estimated $5.17 billion, or more than 11% of industry flows.

With a track record like that, he’s taking the lead in an industry that is changing rapidly.

Amid a landscape littered with abandoned or stalled national acquisition plays for independent financial advisers, Jessica Bibliowicz, 41, continues to press on.

As chief executive of National Financial Partners, the two-year-old distribution network backed by founder Leon Black’s Apollo Management LP, she’s building on a strategy that’s led to the acquisition of 85 affiliates that manage more than $10 billion in assets.

Ms. Bibliowicz’s tenacity makes her someone to watch in the financial services industry.

The daughter of Citigroup Inc. chairman Sanford I. Weill, Ms. Bibliowicz joined National Financial’s consolidation play for insurance brokerages, financial planners and employee benefits firms catering to the affluent as it was starting up.

Aaron Brown, 44, a shareholder activist and co-manager of the Allied Owners Action Fund, has taken technology to the next level to give shareholders a voice in the corporate boardrooms around the country.

Mr. Brown organizes investors through bulletin boards on his eRaider.com website, which boasts the motto: “If they [management] won’t take care of business, we will.”

A finance professor at Yeshiva University in New York, Mr. Brown started the website to support his mutual fund, which was launched a year ago and has a $2,500 minimum investment.

“The web will definitely change the face of shareholder activism,” he says. He should know, he’s leading the way.

Matthew Andresen, 30, president of Island ECN, was all over Capitol Hill last year, spreading the message that electronic trading networks such as Island are revolutionizing the securities industry.

No sooner does he end one crusade does he begin another. Island was an early proponent of decimalization, switching to dollars-and-cents trading before the rest of the industry.

Now the company wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to let ECNs get fully into the market for trading securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange. There are trading limits that apply to ECNs for exchange-listed stocks.

Mr. Andresen already has mastered the art of explaining the complexities of his business in colorful language that the public can easily understand. Not only has he been a prime mover in reshaping the brokerage industry, but Mr. Andresen has taken Washington by storm.

On the banking front, Kenneth Lewis, 53, inherited the Titanic of the industry. Now it’s up him to keep Bank of America Corp. from hitting any icebergs.

The Charlotte, N.C., bank has an eroding loan portfolio, sagging profits and a lackluster stock price. But he has some lifeboats in the form of a strong asset management division and a weak but viable investment banking operation.

Mr. Lewis, who has recently overseen the bank’s daily operations, assumes the CEO position from the retiring Hugh McColl next month in the wake of a 27% drop in fourth-quarter profits. To turn things around, Mr. Lewis’ strategy is to build on initiatives under way in asset management and investment banking. His overall targets are 12% to 15% growth in annual earnings per share and 7% to 9% in revenue growth.

“Ken Lewis will have the responsibility of operating the company and getting the most out of the franchise that he can,” says Thomas F. Theurkauf Jr., an analyst and executive vice president with Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc. in New York.

Audrey M.T. Jones, 52, a managing director at Deutsche Asset Management in New York and co-manager of the U.S. small- and micro-cap equity group, has been in the business of asset management for 28 years.

She calls the shots on small- and micro-cap stocks, and she remains confident that an accommodating Fed and liquidity in the system will improve the market for those issues. As far as she is concerned, under-performance can be attributed to lack of attention by investors.

Her cutting-edge insights into the small-cap sector will make Ms. Jones someone to watch as the stock market finds its bottom and begins heading back up.

Patricia P. Houlihan, 53, chairman of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards and president of Houlihan Financial Resource Group in Oakton, Va., has worked for more than a decade educating CFP licensees.

All of this has been achieved while raising her two sons as a single mother and building a flourishing financial practice. As a smaller practitioner, Ms. Houlihan understands what licensees need because the majority of them also run small shops.

J. Thomas Bradley, 38, president of institutional services with TD Waterhouse Group in New York, must know what it feels like to be an Avis car rental executive.

For the past 10 months he has had to hustle in the wake of Charles Schwab Corp.’s June purchase of U.S. Trust Corp. Mr. Bradley responded by signing an agreement with Capital Trust Company of Delaware to give advisers access to trust services.

Taking another page out of Schwab’s book, he relaunched Waterhouse’s AdvisorDirect program. It now incorporates the company’s greatest retail asset – 175 branches.

Gerald J. Graves, 39, chief operating officer of Schwab Institutional, is masterminding the application of U.S. Trust’s capabilities for the use of independent advisers.

That has tested both his managerial and his diplomatic skills.

Some Schwab advisers question whether the company’s ownership of U.S. Trust puts them in competition for the same customers. Schwab advisers can now make investments in U.S. Trust’s private-equity fund, Excelsior, and offer unbundled trust services.

That means advisers can manage the assets in a client’s trust and leave the administration of the trust to U.S. Trust, a control factor that they appreciate.

Playing off his huge range of relationships, Milton Berlinski, a managing director with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., is the biggest auctioneer of money management businesses.

Since Mr. Berlinski, 44, first began focusing on asset management deals at Goldman in 1992, the New York investment house has handled more than $2 trillion in financial services mergers and about $1 trillion in pure money management deals.

Last year, Goldman advised more than $70 billion worth of deals.

Ronald J. Strauss, 44, head of Merrill Lynch Japan Securities, has done much more to spread an American-style financial advisory business to Asia than almost anyone else.

He did so by taking over the defunct Yamaichi Securities Co. in 1997 and retraining its brokers to become financial planners. The strategy is starting to work.