"Financial stress is hurting worker productivity" by Beth Healy, Globe Staff April 01, 2015
The recession ended nearly six years ago. The stock market has doubled in value since then. But Americans are still so stressed out about money and finances it’s even affecting their productivity at work.
A study by State Street Global Advisors in Boston found that large numbers of workers are experiencing emotional or physical stress that’s related to dealing with their personal finances.
Stagnant wages and competing demands on workers’ wallets — from mortgages and day care to student loans and saving for retirement — are often to blame. If the employee gym was the 1990s answer to employers fretting over rising health care costs, “financial wellness” is today’s buzzword in human resources offices.
In December, State Street Global held a brainstorming session with executives from a dozen Fortune 500 companies, plus some academics, to talk about the issue. At a daylong session in Manhattan, they represented a variety of industries and employees, from the highly compensated to those in manufacturing jobs or driving trucks.
Yeah, let's take another meeting and do another study as the $tatus quo of wealth inequality worsens by the second.
Barbara Kontje of American Express Co. was among those attending the session. She’s director of Retirement Americas & Smart Saving for 21,000 employees at the New York-based financial services company. Even in her industry, she said, concerns about finances abound.
“Money is always top of mind’’ when she talks to employees, Kontje said. “They want to do better with their money. They know they should be saving for retirement. They know they should have an emergency fund. They just don’t know where to start.”
Even the federal government is on to the problem. In a report in August, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said many Americans lie awake at night wondering how to make ends meet.
This is such disingenuous pre$$ propaganda it's disgusting.
Financial stress is worst at lower income levels, according to State Street, but it doesn’t stop there.
At higher levels of pay, the problem becomes more about spending habits than earning power, said Megan Yost, a vice president at State Street Global who works on retirement plans.
Yeah, poor little rich people.
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Even with the improved economy, workers’ financial worries are painfully common.
Another recent survey, commissioned by the Boston communications firm Brodeur Partners, found that people think about money more than about sex. While most workers think about their families and their spouses most, they worry about money 69 percent of the time — more than about religion, work, or their sex and love lives.
“There are just very few people who aren’t thinking about money,’’ said Andrea Coville, chief executive of Brodeur. “That’s a lens you have to understand when you’re talking to people.”
That’s an issue for employers trying to encourage workers to save for retirement, executives said. It’s why State Street Global, a giant investment manager that caters to corporate retirement plans, pension funds, and other large institutional investors, is spending time and money in the weeds of workers’ financial angst.
As usual, State Street has a $elf-$erving interest!!!!
This era’s corporate gym comes in the form of company-sponsored sessions on mortgages and investing, one-on-ones with financial advisers, and webinars....
Looks like brainwa$hing to me.
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Here are a few guys who won't be $tre$$ing out over their pay:
"State Street CEO pay falls 13 percent to $13.5 million in 2014; Company’s net income slipped 6% to $2b" by Beth Healy, Globe Staff April 06, 2015
State Street Corp.’s chief executive, Jay Hooley, took home $13.5 million in 2014, down from $15.5 million the prior year, according to the Boston financial services company’s annual proxy filing with regulators.
How will he live?
Revenue rose 4 percent to $10.3 billion last year. Earnings per share fell 1 percent to $4.57 as the company continued to face a low-interest-rate environment and had to set aside funds to settle legal cases related to foreign exchange trading. Net income fell 6 percent to $2 billion.
They had to put money aside for being a bunch of cheats, but that gets glo$$ed over by the propaganda pre$$.
A year ago, State Street announced it would lay off 400 employees to cut costs. In Massachusetts, 145 employees were affected, or 1 percent of the local workforce.
State Street said Hooley “effectively led State Street through a continued period of market uncertainty and a challenging regulatory environment characterized by evolving and heightening requirements and expectations.”
You like the double$peak?
While his total compensation fell, Hooley continued to receive longstanding corporate perks, including financial planning services, an annual physical, and personal liability coverage, as well as a driver and security services.
Then what is the salary for? Fun?
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"Ex-Fidelity executive to lead State Street’s investment arm" by Beth Healy, Globe Staff March 31, 2015
State Street Global Advisors has hired Ronald O’Hanley, a veteran of Boston financial firms, as its chief executive, in a surprise change of the guard atop one of the city’s largest investment groups.
O’Hanley, 58, will succeed Scott Powers, 56, who joined the $2.45 trillion investment arm of State Street Corp. in April 2008, just months before the financial crisis hit.
The company offered no specific reason for Powers’s departure, saying he had expressed an interest in retiring since last summer. O’Hanley officially takes over in April, and Powers will stay aboard until August to work on the transition, State Street said.
“Although it is bittersweet to be retiring,’’ Powers said in a statement, “I know I leave the firm on a very solid footing, with even greater prospects ahead.”
In his last job, O’Hanley was the number two executive to Abigail Johnson at Fidelity Investments. He left Fidelity in early 2014, shortly after Edward C. “Ned” Johnson 3d named Abigail, his daughter, as his successor to lead the company.
The war is over; Fidelity won. I wonder how Abby fits into all that talk.
Now the wealth inequality concerns are all internal to the 1%, 0.1, 0.01%, pick your percentage. Whichever one it is, you and I, male or female, are not in it.
Isn't it great that the people who designed the policies and that are benefitting from them are looking out for you via their political and media mouthpieces?
Before his 3½ years at Fidelity, O’Hanley was chief executive of Bank of New York Mellon Corp.’s asset management group. He was at State Street rival BNY Mellon for 13 years and previously worked for the consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
Related: Mellon For Breakfast
How ince$tuous!
At State Street Global, O’Hanley will shift his focus to large, global investment clients, as opposed to the more retail-oriented Fidelity. The bulk of State Street Global’s assets are invested in passive index funds, a big draw for pension funds and other institutional investors around the world.
O’Hanley will report to State Street Corp. chief executive Jay Hooley. In an interview, Hooley said he has known O’Hanley for many years in industry circles.
“I feel fortunate we have somebody in Ron who can carry the strategy forward,’’ Hooley said.
The investment group’s total assets under management have climbed 22 percent over the last five years, while revenues have risen 34 percent in that period, to $1.2 billion in 2014.
Hooley said the growth of exchange-traded funds is a major emphasis for the company.
Once the purview of individual investors, they are increasingly popular with institutions, a low-cost way to get broad exposure to market indexes with an increasing array of options.
State Street’s ETF portfolios have grown 85 percent in the past five years, to $466 billion. But the company, once the leader in the ETF market, has lost ground in recent years to rivals BlackRock Inc. and the Vanguard Group.
In his new role, O’Hanley will oversee 2,200 employees and join the parent company’s management committee. He is likely to run into some of his former colleagues at BNY Mellon, he acknowledged.
He said the State Street job is appealing because of the company’s size and position in the market. While Fidelity makes most of its money from active investing, and in mutual funds, O’Hanley said, the shift in perspective is not as great as it may seem from the outside.
“It’s about the science of risk,’’ he said, “how and where you should be taking risk.”
State Street shares fell 35 cents Tuesday to $73.53 on the New York Stock Exchange.
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