Marathon Asset Management, a New York-based global investment advisor overseeing approximately $12.5 billion in assets, has announced that Diego Gradowczyk, former Head of Emerging Markets Trading at Barclays Plc, has joined the firm as a Senior Managing Director and co-Head of Emerging Markets. In his new role, Gradowczyk will co-run the firm’s emerging markets group with Partner and group co-Lead, Gabriel Szpigiel and be a member of the firm’s executive committee. Marathon also announced that it has added Andrew Szmulewicz, a former Executive Director at J.P. Morgan Chase in the Global Index Research Group, to its emerging markets team.
A focus of the firm since its inception in 1998, Marathon’s Emerging Markets Group is comprised of a highly experienced global team of professionals in the firm’s New York, London and Singapore offices. The group takes an opportunistic, flexible approach to capitalize on the wide array of opportunities available across the different emerging market geographies, including Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia.
“Emerging markets is one of our core competences and main strategic areas of focus,” said Louis Hanover, co-Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer for Marathon Asset Management. “We are highly committed to continually looking for ways to strengthen this team to provide our clients with best-in-class investment opportunities. Adding these two extremely accomplished individuals is a testament to this promise and will help us ensure we continue to deliver cutting-edge investment ideas in this space.”
“We are very excited to announce the addition of Diego and Andrew, two very high-caliber investment professionals, to our emerging markets team,” said Gabriel Szpigiel, Partner and Co-Head of Emerging Markets for Marathon Asset Management. “Together, they will help us increase our franchise and investing capabilities in these geographical regions. We look forward to integrating Diego and Andrew into our team and working with them to grow our business.”
Gradowczyk added: “This is an amazing opportunity and I am extremely honored to join a world class firm like Marathon Asset Management. Right now is an exciting time in emerging markets and I am greatly looking forward to working together with Gabriel and the rest of the team to help grow the firm’s emerging markets business.”
With more than two decades of experience working in the space, Gradowczyk brings a tremendous amount of emerging markets investing experience to Marathon. After joining Barclays in 2001, he ran the firm’s Emerging Markets Trading desk for nearly ten years. Prior to Barclays, Gradowczyk was a partner and portfolio manager at Compass Group, a New York-based investment management firm focused on emerging markets.
Szmulewicz previously worked in J.P. Morgan Chase’s Global Index Research group, where he contributed to many of the firm’s emerging market indices, including being a key contributor to the CEMBI index.