Salient Partners has successfully completed its acquisition of Forward Management, creating a USD27 billion diversified asset management firm and reaffirming the firm’s position as provider of liquid alternative and real asset investment strategies.
The combined firm has 250 employees across its offices in Houston, San Francisco and New York.
Salient's management team will continue to be led by John Blaisdell as chairman and chief executive officer, along with Jeremy Radcliffe as president, Lee Partridge as chief investment officer, Ben Hunt as chief risk officer, and Robert Naka as chief operating officer. The firm's portfolio management teams report to Lee Partridge, who oversees the combined firm's investment strategies and investment committees.
"Today marks the conclusion of Forward's search for the right partner and the beginning of our future together as one firm, as we formally unite our teams to pursue one shared goal in mind – to offer investors and investment advisors cost effective, innovative investment strategies, with true portfolio diversification," says John Blaisdell.
Naka says: "Over the coming months, we will complete the process of integrating and optimising our businesses to draw the best from each of our firms. We doubled the size of our investment team, quadrupled the number of strategies and significantly expanded the services we offer our investors and investment advisors. We also plan to further invest in leading edge trading, technology and operations systems. These improvements and upgrades will directly and immediately benefit all our key stakeholders."
Upon completion of the integration process, Salient will announce the final branding for the combined fund platform.
Salient offers a comprehensive suite of alternative multi-asset and single-asset strategies that provides a one-stop solution for investors and investment advisors to create diversified portfolios using the firm's core allocation solutions, or enhance existing portfolios with alpha or income-generating options.
Salient's multi-asset solutions include:
• Global allocation – including risk-parity, global-asset allocation and multi-asset income strategies; and
• Tactical allocation – including trend-following, alternative-beta and tactical-allocation strategies.
Salient's single-asset solutions include:
• Global equity – including frontier markets and international small cap strategies;
•Fixed income and credit – emerging markets debt and high-yield bond strategies;
• Real assets – including master limited partnerships (MLPs), real estate investment trusts (REITs), preferred stock and global infrastructure commodity strategies; and
• Alternative – ultra-high dividend, equity long/short, real estate, credit long/short, hedge fund and private equity strategies.
