American Century appointed new senior executives at its investment management subsidiary, American Century Investment Management (ACIM), to refocus on investment returns.

The appointments come after the Kansas City-based firm lost two senior executives in August -- C. Kim Goodwin and Randall Merck -- to rivals. Goodwin decamped to State Street Research and Merck to Charles Schwab.

William Lyons takes the reins as president of the investment management company and he retains the role of president of ACIM's parent holding company.

Also, Mark Mallon, previously the value/quantitative chief investment officer, is now the new chief investment officer. His old position is to be filled in the coming weeks. James Stowers III, who spent the past two years developing investment management technologies, reassumes his role of chief investment officer for the U.S. growth equities discipline.

"Investment management is our core business, the foundation on which American Century's current and future success is based," said Lyons. "Mark and Jim will ensure our continued strong performance in existing products and will use their considerable experience and creativity to develop complementary investment approaches."

Separately, Kansas City-based ACIM will trim its overall workforce by 72 in response to a decline in the value of assets under management. The fund firm now has some $74 billion of assets under management.

"A decline in assets directly impacts our revenue and profitability," said a spokesperson, adding that the latest move was necessary even after the company's previous job cuts. "We needed to look at further expense reduction in order to fit our projected revenues for 2003."

The spokesperson confirmed that roughly half of those impacted voluntarily took job buyouts, while the remainder were laid off.

The Kansas firm had already reduced its workforce by some 200 employees in the past year. With the latest cuts, the firm will have approximately 2,660 workers.

The cuts were made throughout the fund company, with the human resources and finance departments most heavily impacted. American Century's staff of investment professionals were unaffected. 

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