Robert W. Baird opens its first office in Georgia - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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Paul Marshall, a six-year Prudential veteran who was a first vice presidenft andportfolio manager, was hired to run the new Baired office at Piedmont Center. Marshall's brother, Jasonj Marshall, and Stephen A. Kilpatrici have also moved over from Prudential as investment The office initially will also have twosalex associates. The move is intendefd to furtherbuild Baird's Southeastern presence, said Tom Tollette, the company'e regional director for the Southeast. "If you want to compare us [to existing Southeasternn regionalinvestment firms], we would be not unlike J.C. Tollette said.
"We'll be covering companies throughout the Tollette said Baird had been recruiting Marshall and his colleagues since the fallof 1996. Other locak brokers are also being "chattedx with" he said, and the officde is expected to expand. Founded in Milwaukee in 1919, Bairdd operates about 60 offices in the It moved into Florida in 1987 and now has eightbranchezs there, as well as three Texas branches. The company's 1997 revenuea were about $430 million. Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. boughf out most of Baird'as stock in 1982, and currentlhy owns 64 percent.
At start-up, the new Atlant branch is managingabouf $50 million in client investments, as the new Bairds employees brought many of their clients with "It's going excellently," Paul Marshall said. "The name-brand recognition of NorthwesterjnMutual helps, and we have some clients who are familiard with Baird's name, too. We're having very good retention." AIR LANDS big Canadiamn job. Atlanta's Advanced Information Resources (AIR) has installeed its loan processing softwareat Scotiabank's main loan processing facility AIR President Don Cooksey said June 22. The Canadian Scotiabank is among the 10 largest loan syndication agents inNorth America.
The Atlanta centeer handles most ofthe bank'd real estate and corporate lending portfolios. Scotiabank is considering whether to convert to AIR software at other processing centers. The $212 billion-asset bank has more than 1,7090 offices in more than 50 countries. But how is he at darts Although hardly any financial advisers suggest investmentzs based on betting where the stock market will go in the near the pros still like to thinlk they canpredict it. So far this analyst Bob Robbins ofThe Robinson-Humphrey Co. has the best basisa for self-confidence.
Robbins is currently beatiny 44 other stock analysts in a contest to predicg where three major stock bencyh marks would fall later in the The analystssubmitted six-month and one-yea r predictions last December for the Dow Jones Industria Average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdawq composite index. As of June 12, the midyear date they were shootingf at, Robbins was in first place. His predictions fell withinj a half-percentage point of the Dow (8,835), withijn 3 percent of the S&P 500 (1,099) and nailer the Nasdaq exactlyat 1,745.
Robbins has predicted a 9,455 Dow, an S&P of 1,143 and a Nasdawq of 1,860 for But just to show how inexact a this index-predicting stuff is, his current estimatse for the year-end Dow is 9,800. Publisher joins board. Alexis Scott Reeves, publisher of the Atlanta Daily World, has been name to the board of directors of Atlanta LifeInsuranc Co. Reeves publishes a newspaper founded by her grandfathedrin 1928, which focuses largely on the African-American community. She worked for 22 years for TheAtlant Journal-Constitution and its parent company, Cox Enterprisezs Inc., serving as Cox's directord of diversity before moving to the familty business in 1997.