RWC today announces Mark Walker is joining Louise Keeling as an analyst to work on its Luxembourg domiciled RWC Global Horizon Fund. Walker joins RWC from the Global Investment Research division of Goldman Sachs where he was an equity analyst covering European Telecom and Satellite companies. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Walker worked for Redburn Partners.
Keeling joined RWC in April as a Partner to establish a long only Global Equity team, having previously worked at Marathon Asset Management for six years with Jeremy Hosking managing a portfolio of global equities. Alice Jarman is the desk assistant to the team and joins RWC in September from Searchlight Capital Partners, having previously worked at Artemis Investment Management.
RWC manages $6.4bn, up from $4.8bn at the end of 2012, across equity income, activist equity, convertible bond and equity long/short strategies.
Louise Keeling, Head of Global Horizon Team, commented:
“It was our focus on long-term investing which attracted Mark to the team. We believe that considering short-term performance and tracking error tend to distract and can cause fund managers to miss opportunities presented by going against the herd and taking advantage of out-of-favour assets. Mark’s decision to join us is particularly valuable as his background and academic acumen bring us an interesting and enhancing perspective.
“Our approach aims to exploit the time arbitrage which is available in the market as most investors are focused on the near term. This contrarian approach requires strength of belief as well as a fund structure and working environment that is reinforcing.
“The RWC Global Horizon team takes an approach that allows us to make investments which we believe will create outsized returns for investors. The investment style and alignment of interests between us and our clients is reinforced by the focus on multi-year alpha generation and we encourage investors to take a fee structure that has a low AMC with a long term five year rolling performance fee”
Dan Mannix, CEO commented:
“Mark’s recruitment is another step forwards in the development of Louise’s Global Horizon team. We are seeing significant interest from institutional investors who find the long term approach and fee structure particularly appealing.
“The increase in RWC’s AUM in 2013 from $4.8bn to $6.4bn has been across a number of our funds where we continue to benefit from strong support. We are also seeing a significant increase in demand for our longer-term equity strategies as institutional investors recognize the premium available to them from buy and hold strategies.”
