UK-based boutique RWC Partners has acquired European equity specialist Pensato Capital.
Pensato’s seven-person investment team – which runs roughly $280m ($246m) – will all join RWC as part of the deal. Pensato’s funds include long-only and long/short European equity funds.
The company was founded by former Fidelity International fund manager Graham Clapp in 2008.
Clapp said it was “critical” that the Pensato team was able to spend time analysing companies. He added that “by joining with RWC we have the opportunity to work within a broader organisation that offers the resources and diversification that will help us to develop our strategies and focus purely on generating performance for our investors”.
RWC runs roughly $11.2bn in UK, US global, and emerging markets equity strategies, as well as convertible bonds. It also invests in a small number of Japanese companies through a joint venture with Tokyo-based Nissay Asset Management.
Dan Mannix, RWC’s CEO, said: “We believe that there remains a real demand for exceptional investment teams who are providing something different for investors and we see the competitive environment improving as barriers to entry rise and larger organisation increasingly put the squeeze on their investment teams.”
Fidelity backs LGPS cost code
Fidelity International is the latest asset management group to sign up to the local government pension scheme’s (LGPS) cost disclosure code.
Managers including Investec, Baillie Gifford, Legal & General Investment Management, and Capital International have also signed up to the code, which provides a template for asset managers to break down their fees and disclose aspects such as transaction costs.
The disclosure template has already shed new light on the level of costs and charges being paid by UK’s public pension funds since its introduction in May. The LGPS Advisory Board has estimated that total costs revealed by the disclosure code could hit £1bn (€1.1bn).
Heather Fleming, head of institutional distribution for UK and Ireland at Fidelity, said: “Providing the necessary tools to easily allow our clients to make informed investment decisions has always been a priority for us. We welcome this initiative and recognise the importance in working together as an industry to provide a unified and transparent approach to the reporting of investment costs.”
H20 to buy commodity-focused manager
H2O Asset Management, a global macro multi-strategy investment manager, is to acquire Arctic Blue Capital, a systematic commodity-focused manager, from Stable Asset Management.
According to a statement, the Arctic Blue strategy was launched in 2008 at Canada’s Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, which manages public pension plans in Québec. After deployment at CIBC and Millennium Capital Partners, it was seeded as a standalone firm by Stable Asset Management in 2014.
The deal is a response to “increasing client demand for investment strategies suited to a changing inflationary environment”, according to the statement.
H2O currently manages $14.6bn on behalf of clients and will provide infrastructure and operational support as part of the deal, while Arctic Blue will add its flagship fund, the Arctic Blue Original Strategy, and its equity-focused Atlanterra Strategy, to the H2O distribution platform.
Arctic Blue will continue to be led by CIO and founder Jean-Jacques Duhot.
Cyril Beriot, Head of Managed Accounts at H2O, said: “This deal is timely given current market conditions. We expect the global economy to enter a reflationary phase over the short-to-medium term and our clients will now benefit from a suite of high-quality strategies across all asset classes that are perfectly suited to this new environment.”
The transaction is currently pending FCA approval.
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