Our principal business is managing investment funds and providing investment management and counseling services to high-net-worth individuals and institutions. Our core strategy is to develop and sustain management expertise across a range of investment disciplines and to offer leading investment products and services through multiple distribution channels. In executing this strategy, we have developed a broadly diversified product line and a powerful marketing, distribution and customer service capability. Although we manage and distribute a wide range of products and services, we operate in one business segment, namely as an investment adviser to funds and separate accounts.
We are a market leader in a number of investment areas, including tax-managed equity, value equity, equity income, emerging market equity, floating-rate bank loan, municipal bond, investment grade, global and high-yield bond investing. Our diversified product line offers fund shareholders, retail managed account investors, institutional investors and high-net-worth clients a wide range of products and services designed and managed to generate attractive risk-adjusted returns over the long term. Our equity products encompass a diversity of investment objectives, risk profiles, income levels and geographic representation. Our income investment products cover a broad duration and credit quality range and encompass both taxable and tax-free investments. As of October 31, 2009, we had $154.9 billion in assets under management.
Our principal retail marketing strategy is to distribute funds and separately managed accounts through financial intermediaries in the advice channel. We have a broad reach in this marketplace, with distribution partners including national and regional broker/dealers, independent broker/dealers, independent financial advisors, banks and insurance companies. We support these distribution partners with a team of more than 130 sales professionals covering U.S. and international markets. Specialized sales and marketing professionals in our Wealth Management Solutions Group serve as a resource to financial advisors seeking to help high-net-worth clients address wealth management issues and support the marketing of our products and services in the advice channel.
We also commit significant resources to serving institutional and high-net-worth clients who access investment management services on a direct basis. Through our wholly owned affiliates and consolidated subsidiaries we manage investments for a broad range of clients in the institutional and high-net-worth marketplace, including corporations, endowments, foundations, family offices and public and private employee retirement plans. Specialized sales teams at our affiliates develop relationships in this market and deal directly with these clients.
We conduct our investment management business through four wholly owned affiliates, Eaton Vance Management (“EVM”), Boston Management and Research (“BMR”), Eaton Vance Investment Counsel (“EVIC”) and Eaton Vance Trust Company (“EVTC”), and four other consolidated subsidiaries, Atlanta Capital Management Company, LLC (“Atlanta Capital”), Fox Asset Management LLC (“Fox Asset Management”), Parametric Portfolio Associates LLC (“Parametric Portfolio Associates”) and Parametric Risk Advisors LLC (“Parametric Risk Advisors”). EVM, BMR, EVIC, Atlanta Capital, Fox Asset Management, Parametric Portfolio Associates and Parametric Risk Advisors are all registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) as investment advisers under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (the “Advisers Act”). EVTC, a trust company, is exempt from registration under the Advisers Act. Eaton Vance Distributors, Inc. (“EVD”), a wholly owned broker/dealer registered under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”), markets and sells the Eaton Vance funds and retail managed accounts. Eaton Vance Management (International) Limited (“EVMI”), a wholly owned financial services company registered under the Financial Services and Market Act in the United Kingdom, markets and sells our investment products in Europe and certain other international markets. Eaton Vance Advisers (Ireland) Limited (“EVAI”), a wholly owned company registered under the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority, provides management services to the Eaton Vance Emerald Funds. We are headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, with a satellite office in New York, New York. Our subsidiaries have offices in Atlanta, Georgia; Red Bank, New Jersey; Seattle, Washington; Westport, Connecticut; and London, England. Our sales representatives operate throughout the United States, and in Europe and Latin America. Eaton Vance Corp. was incorporated in Maryland in 1990.
Company History and Development
We have been in the investment management business for eighty-five years, tracing our history to two Boston-based investment managers: Eaton & Howard, formed in 1924, and Vance, Sanders & Company, organized in 1934. Following the 1979 merger of these predecessor organizations to form Eaton Vance, our managed assets consisted primarily of open-end mutual funds marketed to U.S. retail investors under the Eaton Vance brand and investment counsel services offered directly to high-net-worth and institutional investors. In recent years we have expanded our product and distribution focus to include closed-end, private and offshore funds, as well as retail managed accounts and a broad array of products and services for institutional and high-net-worth investors.
In an effort to build our institutional and retail managed account businesses, in fiscal 2001 we acquired an initial 70 percent of Atlanta Capital and 80 percent of Fox Asset Management, investment management firms focusing, respectively, on growth and value equity investment styles. In fiscal 2003, we acquired an initial 80 percent interest in Parametric Portfolio Associates, a leader in structured equity portfolio management. Parametric Portfolio Associates offers three principal products: core equity investment portfolios that seek to outperform client-specified benchmarks on an after-tax basis through active tax management; overlay portfolio management for retail managed accounts utilizing proprietary technology to implement multi-manager portfolios with consolidated trading, reporting and tax management; and quantitative active equity portfolio management, with a primary focus on emerging market equity. Parametric Portfolio Associates’ clients include family offices, individual high-net-worth investors, financial intermediaries, institutional investors and mutual funds.
In fiscal 2004, 2005 and 2006 we completed a series of acquisitions aimed at expanding our management of investment portfolios for high-net-worth individuals through EVIC. In fiscal 2004, we acquired the management contracts of Deutsche Bank’s private investment counsel group in Boston, Massachusetts. In conjunction with the transaction, we hired six investment counselors with extensive experience in providing customized investment management services. We acquired the management contracts of Weston Asset Management in fiscal 2005 and the management contracts of Voyageur Asset Management (MA) Inc. in fiscal 2006.
In fiscal 2007, Parametric Portfolio Associates merged Parametric Risk Advisors, a newly formed Parametric Portfolio Associates’ affiliate, with Managed Risk Advisors, LLC, an investment management and derivatives investment advisory firm based in Westport, Connecticut. The merger extended Parametric Portfolio Associates’ offerings for the wealth management market to include investment programs utilizing equity and equity index options and other derivatives. Parametric Risk Advisors is owned 60 percent by its principals and 40 percent by Parametric Portfolio Associates.
In December 2008, we acquired the Tax Advantaged Bond Strategies (“TABS”) business of M.D. Sass Investors Services (“MD Sass”), a privately held investment manager based in New York, New York. The TABS team employs a disciplined, quantitative investment process that seeks to achieve high after-tax returns and low performance volatility by investing in high quality municipal bonds and U.S. government securities. The TABS business acquired managed approximately $6.9 billion in client assets as of December 31, 2008, consisting of approximately $4.9 billion in institutional and high-net-worth family office accounts and approximately $2.0 billion in retail managed accounts. Subsequent to closing, the TABS business was reorganized as the Tax-Advantaged Bond Strategies division of EVM. TABS maintains its former leadership, portfolio team and investment strategies. Its tax-advantaged income products and services continue to be offered directly to institutional and family office clients. A mutual fund and retail managed accounts are offered by EVD to retail investors through financial intermediaries.