Alliance swaps FPA for Lomas – Alliance Trust reports that its investment manager, Willis Towers Watson, has appointed Lomas Capital Management LLC as managers to a portfolio for its multi-manager investment strategy. Alliance Trust’s assets are managed by nine expert stock pickers. Each of these runs a high conviction, 20-stock portfolio.
Lomas’ investment process identifies economic and fundamental trends on the basis of which the firm purchases stocks that it believes are most likely to benefit from these trends. Lomas does not identify with a particular pre-defined style of investing; instead, it adapts its portfolios to market opportunities, differentiating it from the other stock pickers in the Alliance Trust portfolio.
Lomas is an independent, majority employee-owned, boutique investment firm with a strong investment-led culture specialising in thematic investing. It was founded in 2012, in New York, by Dan Lascano, Charlie LoCastro and Ron McIntosh and, as at 30 September 2020, had $820m of assets under management. The founders average over 30 years investment experience. Dan Lascano will be the lead manager. Lomas is said to have a strong affinity for a high conviction approach, as their standard long-only portfolios typically have up to 22 stocks selected from an unconstrained global universe with a focus on consumer, industrial and financial sectors.
First Pacific terminated as managers depart
At the same time, First Pacific Advisers (FPA), which has managed part of the portfolio since 1 April 2017 (when Alliance Trust adopted this approach), has been terminated. The team managing the company’s assets, led by Pierre Py and Greg Herr, left FPA on 16 October 2020 after setting up Phaeacian Partners, a joint venture with Polar Capital. Alliance Trust thanks FPA for its stewardship on behalf of shareholders over the past three and a half years.
Lomas is being allocated 9% of the portfolio. This will be funded from a reallocation of the portfolio, primarily the allocation previously managed by FPA. A transition manager has been appointed and Lomas’ appointment will be effective once the transition has been completed. As part of the transition, adjustments are also being made by WTW to re-balance the risk in the portfolio.
ATST : Alliance swaps FPA for Lomas