Investment Manager Profile Section

News

Ohio PERS Names New Director

Christopher DeRose has been named executive director of the $73 billion Ohio Public Employees' Retirement System...

CIO at Houston Muni. to Retire

Neal Wallach, CIO of the $1.4 billion Houston Municipal Employees' Pension System, will retire at the end of the month...

RCM Hires for Public Funds

Victoria Grissom has joined RCM as the head of public funds sales, confirmed an official at the firm.

NYC Deputy Comptroller Resigns

Horatio Sparkes, deputy comptroller of pensions for the City of New York, will soon part ways with the fund...

Scottish Widows Plots U.S. Invasion

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership is on track to become a top emerging markets contender in the U.S....

More

Articles

FGA Pushes Non-U.S. Equity Fund

Franklin Global Advisers (FGA) is so proud of the performance record of its institutional non-U.S. equity strategy, which it has been running for years, that the manager decided to start offering the strategy to individual investors. The new fund, called the Franklin International Growth Fund, will apply exactly the same techniques and will mirror the same investment decisions of the institutional strategy, said Par Rostom, co-portfolio manager with Colleen Barbeau of both programs. 'We've got a five-year record of investing in non-U.S. equity for institutions, with $3 billion under management,' he said. 'We thought it made sense to have a similar strategy on the retail side.'

Putnam Places Emphasis on Currency

Most investors probably don't think about it, but when they invest in international assets-bonds or equities-they are also playing the currency markets, whether actively or by default. This is true whether the fund they are in hedges those foreign currencies, or not. Parker King, managing director and CIO for currency strategy at Putnam Investments, oversees the operation that runs pure currency strategies at the Boston-based investment house, and that also helps to minimize the currency risk in the firm's $35 billion in other international investment funds and strategies.

Sextant Capital Sees Increased Flows with Water Fund

Water may seem like it's everywhere, but Otto Spork, president, CEO, founder and lead portfolio manager for Toronto-based Sextant Capital Management's three funds, said it is really a rare and increasingly scarce-and valuable-commodity. Spork, a former surgeon, and Sextant Capital, set up a water fund last April, the Sextant Strategic Global Water Fund. Invested primarily in three privately held water companies based in Europe, which are developing plans to export water to water scarce areas by ship, the fund has seen growth of 209.7% since inception.

SGA: The Time is Right for Smid-Cap

What if you made an investment strategy with no applicable index? That's the situation that faced Cynthia Tusan, founder and portfolio manager of Strategic Global Advisors (SGA), a Newport Beach, Calif. investment management company that developed and launched an international small- to mid-cap core strategy in October 2006.

The Physics of Investing: Thales Applies Science to Investment Style

Some people have compared playing the stock market to horseracing, which would suggest that being a winner calls for either praying hard and often or studying the stock tables closely. Marek Fludzinski, founder and CEO of Thales Fund Management, said a better idea is to study physics. 'Physics is really about trying to model the world and about when to make approximations,' said Fludzinski, who earned a Ph.D in theoretical physics from Princeton University. 'Since trading isn't just driven by physical laws, but also by psychology, modeling to the fourth significant figure isn't relevant, and physicists are good at figuring that out.'

More