MANAGEMENT BRIEFS

Aetna Life & Casualty named Thomas O'Neill president and chief executive officer of its investment management group. O'Neill was previously general partner at Hellmann, Jordan Management Co., a Boston-based investment firm. O'Neill will join Aetna July 1, overseeing its newly restructured investment group. Previously known as Aetna Capital Management, the group is moving into a more independent role and is considering a name change. The group currently has $20 billion under management.

Also at Aetna: Sources say the investment group is currently converting as planned to Texas Instruments Inc.'s Maximis portfolio management system. These sources say the conversion of the firm's accounts will be in phases, with a number of portfolios slated to be converted during the third quarter. Aetna is running Maximis on an IBM mainframe. However, industry sources also say the firm has expressed interest in a Unix version of Maximis, which runs on Hewlett-Packard Co. computers and makes use of RDBMS software from Oracle Corp.

New Jersey-based Edison Group, a privately held money management firm has installed Securities Software & Consulting Inc.'s (SS&C) Camra portfolio accounting and management system. Edison, which manages $30 million in assets for family-owned trust funds and in-house assets, is running Camra on a 486-based server from Compaq Computer Corp. The firm considered Thomson Financial Services Inc.'s Portia system and Advent Software Inc.'s Professional Portfolio before settling on SS&C's Camra.

Alliance Capital Management L.P. has signed a nonbinding agreement with Xerox Financial Services Inc. to purchase its Shields Asset Management and its Regent Investor Services subsidiaries for $85 million in cash or in newly issued shares with a higher value. The move by Alliance comes on the heels of its merger with Equitable Capital Management, which took place in February. The finalization of the Equitable deal has been delayed by the new acquisition--Alliance is investigating whether the proxy needs to be re-filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Despite its listing in Nelson Publications' TechResources manual for 1993, sources at Andersen Consulting Inc. say its Invest/1 system is no longer actively marketed by the vendor. Andersen, based in Hartford, Conn., developed the system during the 1980s in conjunction with Aetna Life & Casualty. After years of development, Aetna dropped the project and installed Texas Instrument's Maximis (see related brief). One industry source says that the Aetna project "had too many cooks," and that Andersen went in search of a firm willing to further fund the development out of house--at Andersen's facilities. In October 1992, the vendor began development of a system for Capital Management Group in Los Angeles (IMT, Oct. 30, 1992). However, the current status of that project is unclear.