Eight fund firms and nine PMs are in the running for a quartet of the retail asset management industry's biggest awards next month.

William "Will" Danoff Fidelity Investments Vice President, Portfolio Manager of the Fidelity Contrafund

Fidelity leads the 2025 U.S. Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence race so far, with three nominations, followed by Artisan Partners and BlackRock with two nominations each. The M* team unveiled the nominees yesterday across four categories: "exemplary stewardship" (for firms) and "outstanding allocation portfolio manager," "outstanding equity portfolio manager," and "outstanding fixed income portfolio manager" (for individual PMs).

Here's a list of all the nominees:

Fidelity:

Ford O'Neill for outstanding fixed income PM,

Will Danoff for outstanding equity PM, and

the Boston Behemoth itself for exemplary stewardship;

Artisan:

Bryan Krug for outstanding fixed income PM, and

David Samra for outstanding equity PM;

BlackRock:

Michael Gates for outstanding allocation PM, and

Phil Green, also for outstanding allocation PM;

Dimensional Fund Advisors for exemplary stewardship;

Natixis' Harris Associates (home of the Oakmark Funds):

Bill Nygren, for outstanding equity PM;

J.P. Morgan:

Richard Figuly for outstanding fixed income PM;

Sun Life's MFS for exemplary stewardship; and

T. Rowe Price:

David Giroux for outstanding allocation PM.

M*'s Bridget Hughes, Alec Lucas, Tony Thomas, and Janet Yang Rohr shared more details about each of the nominees in each of the four categories. Michael Claussen, an M* spokesperson, confirms that the M* team will reveal the four winners on July 8 via a press release and a LinkedIn webinar. (Meanwhile, next week the M* team will host their 2025 Morningstar Investment Conference at the Navy Pier in Chicago.)

These will be M*'s seventh annual U.S. Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence, and it looks as though this time the M* folks will give out four times as many awards as in 2024 (when they only recognized a single "U.S. Outstanding Portfolio Manager" award winner). This revamped M* awards program launched in 2019, as a successor to a prior program. The M* team debuted the program that year with three categories, reduced that to two categories in 2022 and narrowed it to just one category last year; now in 2025 they've expanded the program out to four categories.

Editor's Note: A prior version of this story gave the wrong planned timing for the upcoming revelation of the winners of 2025 U.S. Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence. To confirm, the winners of all four awards will be revealed on the same day next month, specifically on July 8.  

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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