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Morgan Stanley Launches The Institute of Family Wealth Management

Morgan Stanley lanza un nuevo instituto de gestión patrimonial familiar — Wikimedia CommonsPhoto: Jenix89. Morgan Stanley Launches The Institute of Family Wealth Management

Morgan Stanley Wealth Management has announced the launch of its Institute of Family Wealth Management (IFWM) to focus on family wealth which is part of a powerful strategy designed to help its Financial Advisors better serve clients’ growing multigenerational needs.

The IFWM is the first-of-its-kind interactive e-learning program that will give Financial Advisors the resources, process and knowledge to transform individual relationships into family relationships. The curriculum, which is entirely digital and accessible via tablet or PC, addresses the important planning needs of clients and their entire families, including spouses, children and aging parents, and the skills to engage these family members in the planning process.

“We are on the cusp of the largest wealth transfer in history, and we recognize the need for industry-leading family-focused solutions,” said Andy Saperstein, Head of Investment Products and Services. “The IFWM demonstrates our dedicated approach to building meaningful family relationships.”

The Firm’s most highly regarded wealth management experts, including Financial Advisors who already do this well, not only informed the content, but provide practical and tactical advice, via video messages and best practices, on how to apply the learnings in client engagements.

The Family Wealth Advisor designation, earned upon completion of the program, indicates a mastery of topics such as estate planning from the family perspective, families and philanthropy and family enterprises, as well as demonstrated ability to have effective conversations that help families understand and transition wealth from one generation to another.

“Innovative approaches such as the IFWM are part of our ongoing efforts to enhance the effectiveness of our Financial Advisors to the benefit of our clients,” said Jim Tracy, director of Morgan Stanley’s Consulting Group Wealth Advisory Solutions. “By building stronger relationships with clients and their entire families, we will lead the industry with our distinct family focus. Online advice is proliferating, but nothing can replace the value of personal advice from a highly trained professional who can ask the right questions.”

Morningstar Launches Family of More Than 60 New Global Equity Indexes

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Morningstar lanza 60 nuevos índices de renta variable — . Morningstar Launches Family of More Than 60 New Global Equity Indexes

Morningstar has launched more than 60 new global equity indexes. Now, Morningstar’s index family spans 45 countries in both developed and emerging markets. The new indexes provide investors with benchmarking tools that reflect the performance of equity markets worldwide and will serve as the foundation for the next generation of Morningstar “strategic beta” indexes.

“As more and more individual investors, advisors, and institutions take a global perspective to investing, our new index family will provide them with meaningful, consistent worldwide views across market capitalizations and regions to provide a deeper understanding of market behavior throughout the globe,” Sanjay Arya, head of Morningstar Indexes, said.

Morningstar’s new index family comprises global, regional, and country-specific indexes using a transparent, rules-based methodology with a focus on the investability of the underlying securities. The new index family can help investors with:

Market monitoring—Comprehensive and non-overlapping, the indexes allow investors to analyze performance trends and market movements around the globe.
Asset allocation—The global equity indexes reflect the risk and return profiles of each developed and emerging market country and can help investors build better model portfolios.
Attribution analysis—Investors can use the indexes to perform attribution analysis to understand what drives a manager’s or portfolio’s performance.

Currently, the indexes are available with end-of-day returns and constituent data in Morningstar Direct, the firm’s research platform for institutions. In the coming months, the company will add the indexes into Morningstar Advisor Workstation^S and Morningstar.com, investment platforms for advisors and individuals, respectively. Morningstar also plans to roll out real-time calculations early next year for the development of market monitoring tools and strategic beta indexes. Morningstar defines strategic beta indexes as those that seek to either improve performance or alter the level of risk relative to a standard benchmark.

Introduced in 2002, the Morningstar Indexes include a broad range of traditional beta equity, fixed income, and commodity indexes that are also combined to form asset allocation index series. In addition, Morningstar Indexes offers a family of strategic beta indexes that draw on the equity, fund, and asset allocation research across the company. Currently, Morningstar has more than 280 indexes and approximately 40 exchange-traded products track Morningstar Indexes globally.

ING IM Hires Convertible Bond Team from Avoca Capital

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ING IM contrata al equipo de bonos convertibles de Avoca — . ING IM Hires Convertible Bond Team from Avoca Capital

ING Investment Management has confirmed the hire off Tarek Saber and Jasper van Ingen from Avoca Convertible Bond Partners LLP to add convertible bond investment capabilities.

Having joined in November, Saber and Jasper respectively fulfill the roles of investment team manager Convertible Bonds and senior portfolio manager Convertible Bonds, based in London. The two previously managed the Avoca Convertible Select Global Fund, which launched in April 2012.

Tarek Saber has more than 27 years of experiences in convertible bond markets. He joined Avoca in 2011 where he led the convertible bond business. Prior to joining Avoca, Saber was at ABP/APG, where he set up and managed the successful corporate opportunity strategy fund (COS fund), which consisted of investments in convertible bonds and equity linked instruments. Before this, he spent seventeen years in investment banking as global head of convertible bonds at HSBC Investment Bank and as head of European convertible bonds and global head of global depository receipts trading at Schroder Securities.

Jasper Van Ingen has more than 10 years of experience in convertible bond markets. Between 2004 and 2010, he was senior portfolio manager at APG’s COS Fund. Van Ingen played an important role in the development of the COS Fund. He was responsible for the day to day management of the fund in all aspects, ranging from fundamental analysis to trading and corporate restructuring. Before joining the COS Fund, Van Ingen worked as a portfolio manager at APG’s $5 billion Hedge Fund investment department in Amsterdam and New York.

Defusing the Fiscal Timebomb

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Standard Life Investments warns that the public finances of developed countries are still vulnerable to an economic shock unless more is done to boost growth and reduce debt.

In the latest edition of Global Perspective, research by Standard Life Investments shows that sovereign debt in the developed economies of the OECD has ballooned since the financial crisis and that a renewed recession would push debt to even more worrying levels. Governments and central banks should act now to reduce their fiscal imbalances.

Countries can help improve their debt outlooks by pursuing growth friendly policies alongside prudent, long-term credible fiscal planning. The best policy response should include a combination of monetary stimulus, investment in infrastructure and deep structural reform. Without these measures, countries may resort to more painful and damaging economic policies to deal with high public debt burdens.

Jeremy Lawson, Chief Economist, Standard Life Investments, said: “The financial crisis has left a deep scar on public sector balance sheets across the developed world. Increases in debt, lower nominal growth rates and weakened budget positions have made governments vulnerable to another economic shock. What can be done to make public finances more robust and reduce debt positions?

“Our simple debt equation helps to provide some answers and shows that improving the nominal growth outlook provides the best policy option. Some economies, particularly those in the Eurozone, require further monetary stimulus alongside a temporary, targeted loosening of fiscal policy.

“More generally, countries should look to boost long-term growth rates by accelerating structural reforms aimed at boosting productivity. Public infrastructure investment is another avenue to promote growth, with the added attraction of being fiscally neutral if done effectively. Longer-term consolidation plans must also be enhanced.”

Wells Fargo Survey: Affluent Women ‘Enjoy’ Making Money

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A strong majority (93%) of affluent women “enjoy making and accumulating money” and more than half (53%) believe that money helps buy happiness, according to a new Wells Fargo survey of affluent women. Women have a strong sense of pride in earning money with 85% of them saying they feel proud about their earning power. Versta Research conducted the survey of 1,872 women, ages 40-79 with at least $250,000 in household investable assets, to examine their perspectives on wealth, investing, work and retirement.

Affluent women are taking the lead in managing the daily finances with 82% percent managing the household budget and purchase decisions, 79% managing the household cash flow and 75% paying the bills. But only 46% of these women are taking primary responsibility for choosing and managing investment accounts, and this rate falls to 34% among married women. Affluent women in their 40s buck this trend, with more than half (56%) choosing and managing investment accounts.

As their wealth has increased, 43% of affluent women say they have become more competent at handling investments, while 53% stayed the same and 4% became less competent. Along similar lines, a minority of these women (36%) say they have become more involved in financial decision making, while a majority (58%) say their involvement in financial decision making has stayed the same and 6% became less involved.

“I don’t think I’ve seen a study where women so overwhelming express joy at earning money and pride in their capacity to do so. And, they credit the stock market for increasing their wealth. However, we see fewer women managing their investments, although that is changing. The good news is more younger women in the workplace are taking on the role of investing for their households. If you are making money and you think the market is helping your money to grow, then it makes sense to be more directly involved in investment decisions,” said Karen Wimbish, director of Retail Retirement at Wells Fargo.

Wealth and the Stock Market

While a majority of affluent women (94%) feel they’ve worked hard to create their wealth, 68% acknowledge that most of their wealth has been generated by investments and growth in the stock market. More than three-quarters (78%) feel the stock market is the best way to grow savings over the long term. In fact, nearly two-thirds (64%) of affluent women say it’s more exciting to watch assets grow through good investments in the stock market versus watching it grow by earning and saving them (36%).

Given the stock market’s growth over the last five years, 37% of affluent women say they are “more eager to put money into the market right now,” while 23% are “more reluctant to put money in the stock market now” and 40% admit they “don’t pay much attention to the stock market.” Interestingly, almost three-quarters (73%) disagree that the stock market is too risky for them while 27% agree. But this is tempered with the more than half of women (54%) worried about losing money in the stock market.

The Role of Work

Work is an instrumental part of life for affluent women. In fact, three-quarters of affluent working women say having a job or career is important to them even if they don’t need the money. Two-thirds feel they are fairly compensated at work today. Yet, 59% of affluent working women don’t think women will achieve pay equality in the workplace in the next 10 years.

Sixty-two percent believe that women can “have it all” when it comes to balancing their career and family. However, only 38% say “having it all” is their goal (of whom 81% feel they are succeeding at it). Two-thirds (65%) of affluent women believe fathers should be more proactive about staying home to help raise children. Even if “having it all” is not the goal of many affluent working women, 58% say they are struggling with work-life balance. If given the opportunity for a big promotion at work that offered a significant step up from their current role and level of responsibilities, two-thirds (66%) of affluent women would accept it (of which 31% would be “excited, eager, and ready for it” and 35% would “accept it, but with reservations”) and 34% would decline it. Of those who would “accept it, but with reservations,” 53% worry about managing work-life balance, 30% worry about whether they are ready and have the skills to succeed, 16% are not sure if their current career path is what they really want and 23% cite other reasons.

Bequeathing the Financial Knowledge

While generally most affluent women would agree their parents did a good job teaching them about managing and saving money when they were growing up, more than two-thirds say no one ever taught them how to invest in the stock market. Nearly all affluent women (98%) say it’s important for women to feel confident about investing, but fewer (71%) actually do. One in five (21%) say one of their biggest financial regrets is not learning more about money and finance. While nearly one-third (30%) think that men are more interested in finances and investing, a majority (89%) don’t think men are better at it and half of affluent women think that men are overconfident when it comes to investing.

“It is interesting to see that affluent women credit their wealth to the stock market even though most say that no one taught them how to invest in the market,” said Wimbish. “These are successful women that should have the confidence and interest in making investment decisions for their future.”

Saving for Retirement

Affluent women are well-positioned for retirement. While the financial crisis did not affect the financial well-being for a majority of affluent women (57%), it did impact their savings behavior. More than half (54%) say it made them “more aggressive about saving money.” Only 48% of non-retired affluent women have an annual savings goal, and the median annual goal is $20,000. Non-retirees have saved a median of $600,000 and have a median goal of $1 million. They plan to retire at the average age of 64. While three out of four affluent women agree that they need at least $1 million to “feel wealthy,” 42% feel they would need $2 million or more.

“It’s crucial to have a savings goal so you know if you are on track. These women have the means and are disciplined savers, but having a financial plan with an investment strategy can put them on an even better path,” said Wimbish.

The affluent women surveyed exude confidence about having enough money. Four out of five (82%) non-retirees feel confident they will have enough money to live the kind of retirement they want. Nearly all (95%) of retired affluent women feel they will have enough money in retirement.

Seventy-two percent of non-retirees value their assets and wealth more for the lifestyle and security it will afford them in retirement versus the lifestyle and security it gives them right now (28%). The top three things that scare affluent women about retirement are: losing their health (55%), losing their mental abilities (52%) and running out of money (29%).

Defining a Successful Retirement

In defining a successful retirement, more than half of affluent women feel it is having enough money for their preferred lifestyle (55%), with other top choices including being healthy (23%) or spending time with family and friends (13%). When non-retirees think about their future in retirement, they look forward to spending more time with family (64%), focusing on physical fitness (63%) and becoming more charitable with their time (58%).

While it is hard to imagine what life will be in retirement, half of non-retirees (52%) anticipate their expectations and goals will change once they retire. Fifty-eight percent of retired affluent women say they did not have a realistic picture of what life in retirement would be like until they were in their 60s and beyond. And 43% of retired women say their retirement years are different from what they imagined.

“Life in retirement is hard to imagine until you are actually living in it. Having the fortitude to have a financial plan with realistic goals for saving and investing will allow you to recalibrate your retirement dreams when the time comes,” said Wimbish.

Allianz GI: Alternatives Are Growing Up

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Following the 2008 market meltdown, alternatives have undergone a significant transformation. Historically mainly popular among HNWI’s and distributed via small scale boutiques, they are increasingly endorsed by large asset managers and have caught the attention of institutional investors, comments Allianz Global Investors’ Spencer Rhodes.

One example is Allianz Global Investors. Its AUM in alternatives has increased from €2.1bn to €5.4bn year on year as of October 2014. Out of these, €3.4bn are currently invested in liquid alternatives such as options and futures and the remainder in illiquid assets such as infrastructure.

The product range in liquid alternatives ranges from market neutral equity long/short to structured alpha option strategies through systematic risk premia to global fundamental absolute return strategies.

According to Spencer Rhodes, Alternative Investments global business manager, the incentive to invest in alternatives has changed since the 2008 crisis, shifting from alpha generation towards downside protection as investors grapple with the tangible problem of the ongoing macro environment.

“Clients need bond substitutes because rates are low, but with stock markets at all-time highs, many are nervous about taking more equity exposure. This leads to a natural exploration of alternative investments,” says Rhodes.

Yet since the crisis, hedge fund performance has come in for criticism, as indices such as the Bloomberg Hedge Fund Index have consistently trailed the S&P 500.

With the change of targets, the performance of alternatives should also be assessed differently, argues Rhodes. “Criticising a hedge fund because it delivers less return than a stock market index is missing the point. Success depends on what you expect that particular hedge fund to do.

“For example, our Allianz Discovery Europe Strategy is a long/short equity market neutral fund targeting 5-8% annualised return with 5-9% annualised volatility. If it hits this range on both metrics, it is successful in the eyes of our clients regardless of what happens with the FTSE 100 or the Euro Stoxx 50.”

Regulation

The introduction of the AIFMD regime has limited the use of Caiman Island domiciled feeder funds by European providers, unlike US peers. The question, including for those involved in the liquid alternative space, is whether this will be a help or a hindrance. “AIFMD is making it more difficult for hedge fund boutiques to market their funds in Europe if they have previously only used Cayman legal structures. AIFMD is not a problem for alternative Ucits managers like us because our funds are already Ucits products,” Rhodes says.

“Our Discovery Europe long/short equity market neutral fund started out as a Cayman fund in 2007, but we converted it to a Ucits fund in 2009. Within the industry, that made us an early adopter of Ucits for our alternative funds. Our view back in 2009 was that our large continental European client base would eventually prefer Ucits for their alternative strategies, and that has now, in fact, become a widely-held preference across Europe.”

“Going forward, downside protection, volatility management, and diversification will remain the defining themes contributing to the mainstreaming of alternatives,” says Rhodes. “Like in any industry, you will have innovation from boutiques in the early years, but now larger, more established investment managers are institutionalising and mainstreaming alternative investments to help deliver outcomes for clients.”

The Boston Company AM Launches MLP and Event-Driven Alternative Strategies for Institutional Investors

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The Boston Company Asset Management, LLC (TBCAM), a Boston-based BNY Mellon boutique that invests in active equity, has launched two new strategies for institutional investors – an energy infrastructure strategy that utilizes master limited partnerships (MLPs) and an event-driven absolute return strategy. To manage these offerings, TBCAM has brought on an experienced team that founded and managed Pine Cobble Capital, LLC, along with their existing strategies and assets.

The energy infrastructure strategy invests primarily in companies that own and operate midstream assets, such as pipelines, terminals and processing facilities, which have long useful lives and offer attractive rates of return. The strategy focuses on generating total returns through a combination of current yield, distribution growth, and the identification of catalysts that could affect cash flow and market perception. This strategy invests in MLPs, corporations that control MLPs or midstream assets, and other companies influenced by developments in U.S. energy infrastructure.

The event-driven strategy invests in a concentrated number of long and short positions with potential value drivers such as financial or corporate structure changes, operational restructurings, mergers and acquisitions or special situations. This strategy is focused primarily on U.S. small and mid-capitalization equities and also opportunistically invests across the capital structure in corporate credit securities.

Bart Grenier, chief executive officer and chief investment officer for TBCAM, said, “The launch of these two strategies significantly strengthens our alternative investment capabilities at a time when institutional investors are increasingly looking for new investment options. We believe the energy infrastructure sector presents a compelling opportunity for a catalyst-driven, total return approach due to the combination of attractive current yield, strong distribution growth potential, and a dynamic industry environment. Moreover, the bottom-up, value-oriented process employed by the event-driven strategy is a good fit with The Boston Company’s fundamental approach.”

The two strategies are managed by Robert A. Nicholson and Zev D. Nijensohn, who joined TBCAM in November, 2014, as senior managing directors and senior portfolio managers from Pine Cobble Capital LLC, which they co-founded in 2007. The team will continue to take the same approach it utilized at Pine Cobble and has transitioned the strategies and assets it managed to TBCAM.

Prior to co-founding Pine Cobble, Nicholson served as a managing director and general partner at Spectrum Equity Investors, a private equity firm focused on media, communications, business and consumer services, and technology. Previously, he was a consultant at Bain & Company. Nicholson received his bachelor’s degree with honors in economics from Williams College and an MBA with high distinction from Harvard Business School.

Nijensohn was previously a senior analyst at Empyrean Capital LP, a multi-strategy event-driven hedge fund, where he covered telecom, media, financial services and business services. He also was a research analyst at Shumway Capital, a principal at Spectrum Equity Investors, and a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Robertson Stephens. Nijensohn holds an AB in history from Dartmouth College.

“Fundamental analysis is core to what we do, and it’s also at the core of The Boston Company,” said Nicholson. “We look forward to contributing our knowledge and experience and believe TBCAM’s platform enhances our ability to deliver attractive returns to a broader client base,” Nijensohn added.

Loomis Sayles Expands Scott Service’s Global Bond Portfolio Management Responsibilities

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Loomis Sayles refuerza su equipo de renta fija con el nombramiento de Scott Service como co-gestor — Wikimedia CommonsPhoto: Scott Service, co-portfolio manager at Loomis, Sayles & Company . Loomis Sayles Expands Scott Service’s Global Bond Portfolio Management Responsibilities

Loomis, Sayles & Company announced today that Scott Service, CFA, has been named co-portfolio manager on the following suite of investment strategies managed by the company’s global bond team:

Loomis Sayles Global Opportunistic Bond Fund (UCITS)
All institutional global aggregate strategies
All world government bond portfolios

Scott, a long-time global credit strategist and portfolio manager on the global bond team, joins co-portfolio managers Lynda Schweitzer, David Rolley and Ken Buntrock on the Fund. Prior to this promotion, Scott was a co-portfolio manager on the team’s global credit strategies. Together, the team oversees approximately $38 billion in global assets. Scott reports to Jae Park, chief investment officer.

“Scott is a valued member of the global bond team,” said Ken Buntrock, co-head of the global bond group. “As a team, we have enjoyed the success of a growing client base over the last ten years. By naming Scott a portfolio manager for our full suite of global bond products, we feel well positioned for future growth and success.”

Scott, a member of the global bond team since 2004, remains co-portfolio manager on the team’s global credit and global corporate strategies as well as several offshore funds including the Loomis Sayles Global Credit Fund and the Loomis Sayles Institutional Global Corporate Fund.

Scott joined Loomis Sayles in 1995 and was promoted to credit analyst in 1999. Between 2001 and 2003, Scott worked in Paris for Loomis Sayles’ parent company, Natixis Global Asset Management. He returned to the Loomis Sayles fixed income team in 2003 and became team leader of the global investment grade sector team. Scott joined the global bond team in 2004. Scott earned his Bachelor of Science from Babson College and an MBA from Bentley College.

Crucial Differences Amongst Multi Asset Funds

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Diferencias cruciales entre las estrategias multiactivos — Photo: Andrés Nieto Porras. Crucial Differences Amongst Multi Asset Funds

Research by ING Investment Management (ING IM) based on flow data from LIPPER confirms the overwhelming popularity of multi asset funds among investors in the recent years. Given the current environment, ING IM expects this trend to persist. At the same time, ING IM’s research reveals a number of important differences among these funds, in terms of expected returns and risks, which should be carefully considered by investors before putting their money to work.

Low growth and multiple financial crises have made investors more risk aware. In combination with the low interest rate environment this has made adaptability of fund managers, their absolute return focus and drawdown management more dominant themes for investors. Coupled with increased uncertainty in the markets, where purely behavioural factors can put pressure on asset prices, investors are seeking flexible funds with clearly defined return and overall risk objectives. Total return multi asset funds provide such characteristics and have been a popular choice among retail as well as institutional investors in the recent years.

Inflows increase

ING IM’s analysis of LIPPER fund data has found that asset allocation funds have been the most popular category of funds among investors in Europe in 2014 so far, with inflows topping over 54 bn EUR up until September. This was also the case in 2013 when asset allocation funds attracted more than 62 bn EUR. These flows were only seconded by sales of flexible bond funds, which saw inflows of around 29 bn in 2013 around 23 bn EUR up until September 2014.

What should investors focus on?

In the face of the apparent attractiveness of the total return multi asset proposition, the investment manager is flagging that investors need to focus more on proven risk awareness of the available multi asset funds. While the return objectives of all such funds are set well above government bond yields, it is essential take into account the riskiness of these funds, typically expressed as overall target volatility. Next to this, while the ability of multi asset fund managers to digest and react to changing market environment is at the core of the multi asset proposition, understanding the degree of flexibility and robustness of these funds at the outset is also essential for investors to decide on where to invest.

How do multi asset funds differ?

ING IM’s analysis of 20 of the largest and most well-known multi asset funds registered in Europe and available only to European investors, with combined assets under management of €165 billion reveals a wide variety of returns and risk. In this group of funds, annual returns before fees over the last 3 years averaged a solid 6.6%. At the same time however, there’s great diversity in the returns of the individual funds as well as their investment approach and the amount of overall risk these funds take on to achieve their returns. While the best performing fund in this group returned 9.8% on an annual basis before fees over the last 3 years, this figure was only 2.8% for the worst performing fund. At the same time the most risky of these funds showed an annualized volatility of 8.9% over this period, while this was only 2.1% for the safest one.

To get better insight in risk adjusted returns, ING IM has ranked the group in terms of their Sharpe ratios. This is the most well-known measure of the risk-return trade-off in an investment portfolio. A higher value indicates a greater reward to taking on risk. While the average fund of the first quartile of this group of 20 funds was able to achieve an annualized return of 8.6% before fees, with a volatility of just 4.5%, resulting and in Sharpe ratio of 1.87, this measure of risk adjusted performance was only 0.75 for the average fund in the fourth quartile, implying a significantly worse trade-off between risk and return. ING IM’s own flagship multi asset strategy – ING (L) Patrimonial First Class Multi Asset – ranks above the top quartile average according to Lipper data, with a Sharpe ratio of 2.04.

Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen, Head of Strategy Multi Asset at ING Investment Management, says: “Multi asset strategies are proving very popular with investors and as growing uncertainly fuels the markets, they are likely to be in even greater demand. However, there is a huge variance in the asset allocation of multi asset funds and their risk profiles, which could be made clearer to investors. For example, for downside risk mitigation purposes, with our Patrimonial First Class Multi Asset strategy we keep at all times at least 50% of the fund’s assets invested in very low risk assets such as high quality government bonds and money market instruments, while invest the rest in other potentially more rewarding assets such as equities and real estate.”

CenterSquare Launches Institutional Global Listed Infrastructure Strategy

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CenterSquare Investment Management, the real asset investment boutique for BNY Mellon, has launched an institutional investment strategy that invests in global infrastructure via publicly traded companies.

The investment universe for the strategy comprises companies throughout the world that manage, own or develop long-term real assets related to energy, communications, water, transportation, and other systems essential to a functioning economy. Within this universe, CenterSquare is focused on companies managing real assets with strong cash flow visibility, low direct commodity exposure, long duration contracts, and a steady long-term demand outlook.

“Global infrastructure assets are vital to economies worldwide and yet are significantly underfunded and underdeveloped,” said Todd Briddell, chief executive officer and chief investment officer for CenterSquare. “We see an opportunity to manage a liquid alternative asset class that features strong and historically stable yields and is poised for growth, driven by both economic and secular trends.”

Briddell said the global listed infrastructure strategy is a natural extension of CenterSquare’s expertise in listed real estate. “As in listed real estate, the return and risk characteristics of global infrastructure securities are based on the underlying real assets,” said Briddell.

CenterSquare’s global listed infrastructure team is led by portfolio managers Maneesh Chhabria, who was instrumental in the development of CenterSquare’s global real estate investment trust (REIT) platform in 2006, and Joshua B. Kohn, an energy investment specialist who joined the firm from Turner Investments.

CenterSquare has also brought in Theodore Brooks, III, previously a director of equity research at the power and utilities group at Barclays Capital, and Marshall E. Reid, previously a senior investment manager at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas.

CenterSquare was founded in 1987 and offers a variety of real asset strategies and products. CenterSquare manages approximately $6.8 billion in public real estate securities through CenterSquare Investment Management, Inc. and approximately $1.5 billion (gross) in debt and private equity real estate investments through CenterSquare Investment Management Holdings, Inc. (together referred to as “CenterSquare”), as of September 30, 2014. It manages investments for institutional investors and high net worth individuals throughout global markets and across public and private capital sectors. It is one of the investment boutiques of BNY Mellon Investment Management.