New Hires Build Out Dedicated Team Focused on Global Tactical Asset Allocation Strategies
New York , London, Singapore, Toronto, July 19, 2011 – Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies (FTMAS), a global investment platform dedicated to managing the firm's proprietary and open-architecture multi-asset, multi-style portfolios, today announced the hiring of five new investment professionals to the platform's global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) group, representing a continued expansion of the group's capabilities over the previous year.
Todd Saunders, senior GTAA portfolio strategist, Alexander Hug, portfolio strategy analyst, as well as Victoria Quach, Billy Tran and Cindy Wu, all quantitative research analysts, recently joined the group and report to Samer Habl, managing director of GTAA. FTMAS has a total of 22 investment professionals as of June 30, 2011, nine of whom are CFA Charterholders, managing a broad array of investment strategies globally.
Global tactical asset allocation (GTAA) is an active investmentstrategy that allocates assets among various asset classes, regions, countries, and currencies seeking to take advantage of inefficiencies between global markets. FTMAS' approach combines top-down and bottom-up forward-looking fundamentals to identity attractive investment opportunities globally. These opportunities are assembled using a disciplined approach to portfolio construction, which emphasizes the importance of managing risk in seeking to generate excess returns. Our GTAA strategy may draw on multiple sources of potential alpha (excess investment return); while it can be tailored to target different levels of risk/return, it can also be combined with any benchmark or beta exposure, and can focus on any subset of the investment universe.
"Retail and institutional investors worldwide are showing an increased demand for asset allocation solutions focused on risk-adjusted performance, and we have expanded and developed the Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies platform to better meet that need," said Brent Smith, CFA, chief investment officer of FTMAS. "FTMAS has assembled a team with over 25 years of experience
providing dedicated asset allocation solutions to our clients and with an experienced GTAA team led by Samer Habl now in place, we're confident we can offer some compelling new investment capabilities to investors worldwide."
William Yun, CFA, executive vice president of Franklin Templeton's Alternative Strategies unit, said, "Investors today are looking not only for new sources of alpha, but also for increased diversification of their portfolios through a broad range of asset classes, including investment solutions and outcome-oriented strategies like global tactical asset allocation. We offer an outstanding investment platform to help our clients with their investment needs, staffed by a dedicated and experienced team which is further supported by Franklin Templeton's broad global research, service, operations and integrated risk management capabilities."
Before joining FTMAS, Samer Habl was managing director of global tactical asset allocation research for Mellon Capital Management Corp., where he was responsible for quantitative research and investment process for TAA, GTAA and Foreign Exchange overlay strategies. He holds a M.Sc. in Engineering Economic Systems and Operations Research (financial engineering) from Stanford University and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
About Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies
Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies leverages the insights and investment strategies from Franklin Templeton's various investment management groups and employs both strategic and tactical asset allocation to create diversified outcome-oriented portfolios focused on risk-adjusted performance and tailored to client needs. FTMAS manages retirement target and global asset allocation portfolios which are available in selected markets. An integrated global investment platform, FTMAS has assembled a team with more than 25 years of experience managing multi-asset and multi-style portfolios with over USD 31 billion in assets under management as of 31 May 2011.
About Franklin Templeton Alternative Strategies
Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies is an investment platform within Franklin Templeton's Alternative Strategies Unit. In addition to FTMAS, the Alternatives Strategies group encompasses Franklin Templeton's asset management joint ventures in Vietnam and China, its wholly-owned local asset management groups in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Dubai, India, Japan Korea, and the United Kingdom, the emerging market private equity and mezzanine capabilities of Darby, and the global REIT, private multi-manager real estate, and real asset capabilities of Franklin Templeton Real Asset Advisors.
Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies is a unit of Franklin Resources, Inc. [NYSE:BEN], a
global investment management
organization operating as Franklin Templeton Investments. Franklin Templeton Investments provides global and domestic investment management solutions managed by its Franklin, Templeton, Mutual Series, Fiduciary Trust, Darby and Bissett investment teams. The San Mateo, CA-based company has more than 60 years of investment experience and over USD 734 billion in assets under management as of 30 June 2011. For more information, please visit
www.franklinresources.com
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Franklin Templeton Multi-Asset Strategies (FTMAS) is a global investment management group dedicated to multi-strategy solutions and is comprised of individuals from various registered entities within Franklin Templeton Investments (FTI). Certain individuals based in Canada that advise FTMAS mandates are part of Fiduciary Trust Company of Canada, a wholly owned subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc., that originated in 1982. FTMAS was formed in 2007 to combine the research and oversight of all multi-strategy investment solutions offered by FTI. FTMAS invests in various Franklin Templeton investment platforms; AUM for FTMAS is reported under each adviser utilized in the investment platform, as well as for FTMAS.