Witan Investment Trust has announced the appointment of GQG Partners, LLC as a manager of a segregated emerging markets portfolio for Witan, with an initial allocation of GBP70m, approximately 4% of the Company’s net assets.
GQG Partners LLC is an independent, employee-owned investment boutique formed in June of 2016 by Rajiv Jain. As of 31st December 2016, the firm managed GBP615 million for clients across three products: Global, International and Emerging Markets equities. GQG Partners employs a quality growth approach to investing with an investment horizon of 5 years or longer. The portfolios are managed in a concentrated, benchmark agnostic fashion with a long term goal of outperforming the market at lower than market risk levels.
Witan’s CEO, Andrew Bell commented, “We have had investments in emerging market funds for a number of years and from 2017 emerging markets also form 5% of the benchmark that we use to measure our performance. Emerging markets are not a homogeneous asset class as countries and companies within the universe often possess quite different investment characteristics. Therefore, a key aspect of our search was to identify a manager to construct a portfolio of high quality companies which was truly benchmark agnostic, selecting the best companies in this varied and exciting area. GQG is a new partnership set up by Rajiv Jain, who will build a concentrated and unconstrained portfolio, aiming to outperform the benchmark over a full market cycle. Rajiv has a longstanding investment record in both global and emerging market equities and we believe GQG’s approach to buying companies exhibiting quality and growth at a reasonable price will benefit Witan’s shareholders in the future.”
WTAN : Witan appoints new emerging markets manager