Company timeline
History of proven experience and innovation
1936
- Frank Russell establishes a brokerage firm in Tacoma, Washington, United States.
1958
- George F. Russell, Jr., joins his grandfather's company after graduating from Harvard Business School and takes over as president three months later, following Frank's death.
- George spends the next 11 years building Russell into a company that offers mutual funds and life insurance in the states of Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Alaska.
1969
- Russell makes the transition from managing money to managing managers marking the beginning period of exponential growth for the company.
- Frank Russell Company opens a New York office and expands its consulting practice in the US.
1979
- Analysts at Russell are the first to recognise investment styles among money managers, and to document the cyclical influence of style on investment performance.
- Russell expands into Europe and opens an office in London as its headquarters for evaluating European money managers.
1980
- Russell launches investment management business, extending the company's valuable manager-of-manager concept to smaller pension plans and their members.
1984
- Russell opens an office in Toronto, Canada.
1986
- Russell opens offices in Tokyo and Sydney.
1991
- Russell opens an office in Auckland, New Zealand.
1993
- Russell introduces multi-manager funds in Europe.
1994
- Russell opens a sales office in Paris, France.
1996
- Russell opens a sales office in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
1997
- Assets under management total £25 billion.
1999
- Russell is acquired by Northwestern Mutual, effective January, becoming a subsidiary of the largest provider of individual life insurance in the United States. Russell retains its name, management, office locations and investment approach.
2000
- Russell opens a sales office in Johannesburg, South Africa.
2001
- Assets under management total £44 billion.
2002
- Russell opens a sales office in Geneva, Switzerland.
2003
- Russell manages portfolio transitions worth over £100 billion.
2004
- Russell's assets under management exceed US$100 billion.
- Russell acquires Pantheon Ventures, a global private equity fund-of-funds specialist.
2005
- Russell named "best specialist manager in Europe", S&P and Lipper.
- Recognised "as the world's largest multi-manager as well as its most global" by The Cerulli Report.
- Russell acknowledged as "Multi-manager of the Year" by Financial News.
- We began our Focused Giving Initiative by committing new philanthropic dollars to support projects that address financial literacy and children.
2007
- Our market-leading family of U.S. equity indexes went global with the launch of the Russell Global Indexes.
- We were proud to be ranked number 30 on Fortune Magazine's "Best Companies to Work For in America" list.
- We surpassed US$220 billion in assets under management (AUM).
2008
- Having pioneered US Growth and Value indexes, Russell builds on its leadership by launching Global Style Indexes.
- Russell Indexes used as benchmarks by 63% of all US institutional equity fund products (Nelson’s Marketplace Web).
2009
- Russell launches the OpenWorld® fund range offering access to innovative, highly specialist investment strategies, offered by difficult to access, high conviction boutique managers in emerging and traditional areas of the market.
Today
- Russell continues to generate ground-breaking developments across the spectrum of investment issues. More importantly, we continue to invest in our people, to ensure that more innovations are on the way. And we spend more time than ever with our front-line clients to learn about their most pressing needs.