Poor Strong Financial [profile]. Over the years, Strong Financial has been pelted with devastating hits that have dwindled the Milwaukee money management firm that once boasted over 1,000 employees down to its last employee.

It all started with the eruption of a market-timing scandal in 2003, Randy Diamond reports for Pensions & Investments. In 2004, the company then sold its mutual fund, institutional and defined contribution businesses — or $29 billion's worth in assets — to Wells Fargo, one week after the SEC banned founder Richard Strong for life from the financial industry. This was followed by a $150 million payout to wronged investors this year, as well as current president John Widmer's filing in May with the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions to dissolve the remaining entities — which, by the way, have not traded securities since 2004 and were delisted by regulators.

But though the company and its shell companies have been more or less dormant in the securities scene for quite some time, it's proved difficult for the firm to exit the industry. It's already taken the firm more than six years to determine which investors would receive payment and how much, and it will take two more for the companies to be dissolved under state rules.

“It's been a longer process that I thought,” Widmer said. “I didn't think I would be here for so long.”

Read more about the company's unfortunate history at Pensions & Investments. 

Edited by: Irene Park


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