Turn on CNBC, Bloomberg or Fox Business news and you're bound to see Springfield's Jeff Layman offering investment advice.
The principal and chief investment officer for BKD Wealth Advisors LLC has become a regular go-to guy for national news networks.
"The news flow of financial stocks is driving market activity," Layman tells CNBC anchor Erin Burnett in an August 2008 live "Squawk on the Street" interview. "Even in areas where business has been pretty good ... the stock-price performance is not keeping up with corporate performance in the near term. But we think that ultimately that'll win out, and we'll have better returns from some of these growth-oriented areas."
The TV appearance is all in a day's work as the mouthpiece for BKD Wealth Advisors, a subsidiary of Top 10 national public accounting firm BKD LLP, which expects to occupy its new $21 million Springfield headquarters by late 2009.
The rocky economy and roller-coaster stock market has kept Layman on his toes.
"When you go through an environment like this, it exposes the risks in a portfolio and causes people to look for a solution or an alternative investment strategy," Layman says.
With $1.56 billion in assets under management as of March 31, BKD Wealth Advisors serves more than 1,100 clients in 32 states, and the company has offices in Springfield, Kansas City, Indianapolis, Denver and Little Rock, Ark.
Layman oversees the portfolio management group across all five offices, selects securities and sets the firm's investment strategy for high net-worth families and institutions. He maintains a client base of around 75 clients - nearly 60 percent of whom are local. Layman also is a member of the St. Louis Society of Financial Analysts and the CFA Institute.
"I love the analytics," he says. "The last few months in this business have been particularly challenging, but I love to search for new ways to improve our portfolio structure and improve the risk-return characteristics of our portfolios."
He was promoted to chief investment officer in April 2008 and was the first person to hold this high-level post since the subsidiary's inception in 1998. Layman is a chartered financial analyst and received a Master of Business Administration in 1995 from Missouri State University. Before joining BKD, he was senior portfolio manager in the private bank group of Bank of America.[[In-content Ad]]
