Salman Ahmed: We recently completed our yearly west coast due diligence, where we go to Calgary and Vancouver and visit some of the investment managers there. We thought it would be worth it for investors to hear about some of the highlights of our trip. The first stop in our trip was Mawer and there have been some changes in the leadership function at the firm.
Adam Fisch: Yes, the big changes have really come with Jim Hall. Over the last few years, we started to have some concerns about the number of responsibilities that he had. I mean he was essentially acting as President, he was CIO, he was Director of Research, really running the whole operation and it gave us some pause about how much time he was actually able to spend running money. He has since divided out a lot of those responsibilities. He hired Michael Mezei as President last year and he has now divided out the Director of Research and the Deputy CIO responsibilities, and that has allowed him to really focus a lot more time on running money.
Ahmed: Another change at Mawer was the changing role for Jeff Mo at Mawer New Canada.
Fisch: Yes, that's a fund that we've had around for a while. Martin Ferguson, he has won awards in the past. He is a manager that we thought pretty highly of, and over the last couple of years he has brought up Jeff Mo, first as a research analyst and then last year he became co-manager.
Ahmed: So, I guess, in his change of responsibilities, he has now taken on a decision-making responsibility for the fund as well. So not only will he be researching some of the names, but he has – him and Martin Ferguson – will be jointly making final decisions on what stocks go in and out of the portfolio and what the weights will be of those specific names.
Fisch: Yes. We wanted to speak to Jeff, because we wanted to get a sense of his investment philosophy. As you said, he is now a trigger puller, which is a bit of a change in responsibility for him. There are a number of different ways that co-managers can set up funds. There are times that both mangers have to sign off on any trades. Some situations, one can trade around names, but to add a name or remove a name they need both to sign off and then there are other situations where each manager can kind of make decisions independently.
Ahmed: Another firm that we visited in Vancouver was Leith Wheeler and that's a firm that we have been keeping an eye on primarily because of a sub-advisory relationship with Tradewinds. That's a firm that lost the CIO, David Iben, and a bunch of people from the global equity team in general and they sub-advised for the international equity mandate at Leith Wheeler.
So, this was something that we had written about in the past just to keep an eye on – for investors to keep an eye on – and we spoke to Leith Wheeler and for now, it appears as if though they are comfortable with Tradewinds continuing to act as the sub-advisor. However, it is something that both Leith Wheeler and we are keeping a close eye on just to ensure that there is some continuity in the investment process and philosophy. Rather than having a single CIO, now Tradewind’s has two CIOs; so they have a joint CIO structure. So, how that structure is going to work and how the responsibilities are going to be divided between those individuals is something that it will take some time to understand. So that's a firm that both Leith Wheeler and we will be keeping a close eye on.
Fisch: The results of these visits will be reflected in our fund reports over the next few months. For more information, visit our website at www.morningstar.ca.
