Capital Group parent names Armour chairman, replacing Rothenberg

Timothy Armour, a 32-year veteran of Capital Group Cos., was named the chairman of the money manager, succeeding James Rothenberg, who died of a heart attack last week. Mr. Armour, 54, most recently served as chairman of the firm's management committee, according to a statement Tuesday by Los Angeles-based Capital Group. The firm oversees $1.25 trillion for clients, most of it in equity mutual funds. Mr. LArmour, who joined Capital Group after graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont, is a champion of active management. In in an interview last year in his Los Angeles office, he defended the track record of the company's stock pickers. “Our number one mantra is we will get you better returns over time,” he said. Since the financial crisis of 2008, investors have been pulling money from actively-managed stock funds, opting instead for index funds and exchange-traded funds which mimic indexes. Growth Fund of America, once America's largest mutual fund, saw its assets shrink to $113 billion at the end of 2012 from $193 billion at the end of 2007. Assets have rebounded to $146 billion as of June 30, data compiled by Bloomberg show. While the firm replaced some managers and hired more salespeople to stem the outflows, it stuck with its basic method of stock picking. “We believe in what we do even if at times the world doesn't,” Mr. Armour said in the 2014 interview. The firm, founded in 1931 by Jonathan Bell Lovelace, is known for its multiple-manager system, which divides each fund's assets among a number of investors who pick stocks or bonds based on their own research.