MASSACHUSETTS FINANCIAL SERVICES CO /MA/

MFS Investment Management was formerly known as Massachusetts Financial Services. The company was created in 1924 by three founders Sherman Adams, Charles H. Learoyd and Ashton L. Carr in Boston. The company started out by reaching its first clients through brokerage channels, creating its first fund Massachusetts Investors Trust, which was reportedly noted as the “world’s first open-end investment fund,” and expanding to $14 million in assets through its first five years of operation. Although it would suffer greatly during the stock market crash of 1929, the company would survive and create a second fund by 1934. By 1959, under the lead of Chairman Dwight Robinson, the Massachusetts Investors Trust would become the largest fund in the United States. The firm would continue to expand, establishing its first institutional client in 1972 and opening its Managed Municipal Bond Trust in 1976. Less than two decades of its first client, Massachusetts Financial Services would create a separate subsidiary known as MFSI to serve its institutional clients. In 1995, the company would open its first overseas office in London, opening another in Singapore just two years later and continuing to open more offices in Tokyo, Mexico City, and Sydney, amongst other notable cities. As of 2014, the company is wholly owned by Sun Life of Canada. Massachusetts Financial Services is a large manager of institutional and insurance assets, taking care of client assets in a wide variety of accounts, and offering investment strategies for major asset classes, dividing regional analysts into eight global sector teams. It employs over 1,700 employees, holding an estimated $450 billion in assets under management. Massachusetts Financial Services’s Massachusetts Investors Trust has become the oldest continuously operating fund in the United States, with the company credited with pioneering the mutual fund and offering over 75 funds available to investors.