The duo brings more than 15 years of experience managing Emerging Market strategies
BRYN MAWR, PA. — April 5, 2023 – Spouting Rock Asset Management, LLC (Spouting Rock), a multi-boutique manager platform providing investment solutions and services, today announces that its affiliate, Glovista Investments, LLC (Glovista), has agreed to a deal with River and Mercantile, for Al Bryant, CFA, and Sudin Poddar, CFA, to join the firm as portfolio managers.
Under the leadership of Chairman Andrew Smith and CEO Marc Brookman, Spouting Rock is strategically working to enhance its portfolio of boutique managers, like Glovista, by funding the acquisitions of industry veterans with similar and complementary investment strategies to continue to grow the offerings platform.
Prior to joining Glovista, Bryant served as head of emerging markets and portfolio manager of the Industrial Life Cycle (ILC) Equity Team at River and Mercantile. Poddar worked alongside Bryant, serving as a portfolio manager and analyst on the firm’s ILC Equities team. The duo previously worked at Credit Suisse for a decade. In 2004, Bryant developed the ILC framework, a structured global equity investment process. Bryant and Poddar leveraged this framework to build several successful global equity strategies, including the Emerging Market (all cap) strategy. The strategy will be rebranded and integrated into Glovista’s existing suite of global and emerging markets investment solutions.
“Over the next few years, we expect emerging markets equities to potentially be one of the most attractive asset classes from an investment perspective owing to strong earnings fundamentals, attractive valuations, under-owned status and an anticipated weakening of the US dollar versus EM currencies,” said Dr. Carlos Asilis, Co-founder and CIO of Glovista. “This is an exciting time for Al and Sudin to be joining our team.”
“Al and Sudin’s life-cycle-based investment approach is very complementary to our top-down-based macro approach to emerging markets,” said Darshan Bhatt, Co-founder and Deputy CIO of Glovista. “The objective of these two very distinct approaches is to strive to create alpha opportunities for investors. Their experience in managing a UCITS fund with European clients will further add to our ability to serve a wider mix of clients.”
Founded in 2007, Glovista is an investment management firm leveraging top-down global macro and bottom-up quantitative analysis to manage listed portfolios for investors. The firm’s flagship investment strategies include the Global Emerging Market Equities Strategy (long only) and Global Tactical Asset Allocation Strategy (GTAA). In August 2021, Spouting Rock acquired a minority stake in Glovista.
Alex Hoctor-Duncan, CEO of the River and Mercantile Group commented:
“We are delighted to support Al and Sudin in this move, we have long-standing connections with the team at Spouting Rock and as River and Mercantile re-focuses, following the sale of its solutions business, we believe our agreement with Glovista will be beneficial for both parties.”
About Spouting Rock Asset Management, LLC
Founded in 2018, Spouting Rock is a multi-boutique manager platform providing traditional and alternative investment solutions aimed to enhance portfolios and protect wealth. With offices outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New York City, Spouting Rock provides sophisticated investors, financial professionals and institutions the ability to invest in niche strategies in less efficient markets where active management has the potential to add meaningful alpha. Spouting Rock offers a robust, cost-efficient platform that provides boutique managers with the distribution and operational benefits of a scaled asset management business.
For more information on Spouting Rock, visit: https://spoutingrock.us/
About Glovista Investments, LLC
Glovista Investments, LLC, an independent investment manager, was formed in 2007 by seasoned industry professionals with decades of financial markets experience spanning many geographic regions and products. Leveraging global macro (top-down) analysis and bottom-up quantitative protocols, Glovista manages two strategies on behalf of institutional and high net worth clients such as state and municipal pension funds, endowments, RIAs and family offices: the Emerging Market Equities Strategy (20-plus year track record) and the Global Tactical Asset Allocation Strategy (15 plus-year track record). The team at Glovista is committed to industry best practices and corporate social responsibility, and has adopted “quality education for all” as a social theme and annually contributes 1% of profits toward philanthropies that promote equal opportunity in education in developing markets.
