Guinness Global Investors to acquire Foresight Capital Management
Guinness Global Investors announces today its acquisition of Foresight Capital Management (FCM), the public markets investment business within Foresight Group. This adds seven listed real assets, sustainable and impact strategies to the Guinness range, along with their management teams.
The deal reunites Mark Brennan, who launched the Guinness Global Real Assets Fund last year as portfolio manager, with funds he developed and managed at FCM prior to joining Guinness. Mark said: “Bringing the real assets strategies and team to Guinness accelerates our growth plans, giving us further scale and a larger investment team."
Eric Bright and Mayank Markanday, Portfolio Managers at FCM, added: “Guinness will provide the FCM real assets team with a great platform for growth. Partnering again with Mark is a natural fit as we seek to expand our capabilities.”
Foresight’s WHEB sustainable and impact funds will sit alongside the Guinness Sustainable Energy and Global Environment strategies, adding a leading impact investing approach to our capabilities.
Recent equity market developments make the timing of this deal opportune. The diversification that real assets offer is in focus, and the sector is experiencing tailwinds from stabilising interest rates and long-term themes such as electrification and demographic change. Meanwhile, investors’ views on sustainable investing have matured, clarifying the need both for a responsible approach to all investments and for dedicated sustainability and impact strategies that truly align with client values. Here, the robust WHEB impact investing strategy will complement existing Guinness sustainable strategies going back to 2006.
Edward Guinness, CEO of Guinness Global Investors, said: “The FCM WHEB team will further improve our responsible investment expertise. This is a good time to be expanding our impact investing activity given the weakness in performance driven by negative politics and market sentiment.”
Ted Franks, portfolio manager of the listed impact strategies at FCM, said: “We have long admired the Guinness rigour in investment process and research, with its expertise in areas that are adjacent to our strategies. The combined investment team brings greater scale and I am excited for the challenge.”
This deal gives Guinness Global Investors new ways to help investors meet their long-term needs and takes us closer to our goal of being the natural choice of long-only fund manager. We look forward to working with the FCM team as they continue to support their clients while bringing the funds to a new audience.