GAM announced the acquisition of Cantab Capital Partners (Cantab), an industry-leading, multi-strategy systematic manager based in Cambridge, UK. Cantab manages USD 4.0 billion in assets for institutional clients worldwide.
Purchase price consists of an upfront cash payment of USD 217 million, funded from GAM’s existing cash resources, and deferred consideration based on future management fee revenues. GAM is the industry’s third-biggest provider of liquid alternative UCITS funds.
At the same time, GAM launches GAM Systematic, a new investment platform dedicated to systematic products and solutions across liquid alternatives and long-only traditional asset classes including equities, debt and multi asset. Cantab will form the cornerstone of GAM Systematic.
By moving into the growing segment of scalable systematic investing, GAM takes an important step to deliver on its long-term objective to expand and diversify its active asset management business. Leading systematic strategies are attracting substantial allocations from investors globally due to their compelling returns and their rigorous, disciplined investment processes.
GAM Systematic will complement GAM’s successful active discretionary investment offering. It will also serve as the Group’s innovation hub for the development of new technologies, investment ideas and approaches for systematic strategies and products.
Alexander S. Friedman, Group Chief Executive Officer of GAM, said: “We have been evaluating how best to enter the systematic space for the past 18 months because we believe it represents an important capability for an active investment firm in the current environment and in the decades to come. GAM Systematic will offer our clients a compelling range of unique products complementary to our strong discretionary product range at a time when the investment industry is challenged to provide cost-efficient, liquid and diversified sources of returns.”