Leading lights
Welcome to the first edition of the Citywire Americas Top 30 magazine – your guide to the key players within the US offshore and Latin American fund selection industry.
As international asset managers continue to target the growing wealth of Latin America’s ultra-high and high net worth entrepreneurs and families, making connections with the people running their money and picking their offshore investments will prove crucial. Using our extensive knowledge of the offshore community, and with the help of numerous veteran industry contacts, we’ve put together a list of the people shaping the offshore product platforms of the biggest and most renowned wirehouses, private banks and wealth managers across the US and Latin America. From chief executives to investment heads and product managers, their titles may vary, but the one point they have in common is that they oversee and select which products they offer to their clients. In short, they are the decision makers. The magazine includes short biographies on each decision maker, as well as a smattering of information on their product platforms, current research efforts, worst manager meeting encounters and favorite financials books. I want to thank all those who participated in this magazine for their help and support, and I hope you find its contents useful and enlightening.
atholl simpson
Citywire Americas
Alberto Arrambide
As senior vice president and head of discretionary, Alberto Arrambide is responsible for managing and supervising the investment mandates of Banco Sabadell’s Miami private banking unit. He is also responsible for the analysis and selection of mutual funds that are offered to his bank’s non-discretionary and advisory clients. In total, the bank’s offshore product platform includes close to 5,000 mutual funds and ETFs. Arrambide joined Banco Sabadell in 2008 when his former firm, BBVA, sold its US private banking business to the bank. Arrambide had been with BBVA since 1998, where he worked as a relationship manager.
Roberto de Andrade
Roberto de Andrade is responsible for Citi Private Bank’s Latin American product platform, where he supports the sales team in delivering investment strategies to clients and servicing those investments. His team is comprised of specialists based in Citi’s New York and Miami offices, where they work to ensure that the private bank’s product platform offers an extensive array of alternative and traditional investment products to its clients. De Andrade’s team serves to deliver comprehensive investment advice to the group’s clients, investment counsellors and private bankers. If you weren’t in this job, what would you be doing? I would probably be in real estate development. I’ve always been drawn to the entire process of building – from planning and budgeting to financing and leasing – and the positive impact a well-executed project has on a community and the wider city.
Pedro Barbosa
Pedro Barbosa is responsible for overseeing international external manager selection across asset classes at the Brazilian group’s US-based fund arm. He leads a team that runs an offshore product platform of $5.4 billion in assets and includes 90 funds. Barbosa has more than 22 years of experience in the wealth and asset management industry. He joined Itaú in 2017 and was previously a partner at Brazilian firms STK Capital, Pollux Capital and Gavea Investimentos. Since 1997, he has been selecting managers and managing portfolios, hedge funds, private equity and venture capital projects.
Rachael Camargo
Rachael Camargo is responsible for managing relationships with third-party asset managers and selecting the best products for HSBC Private Banking’s platform, which includes both 40 Act and Ucits products. Her role also involves developing new discretionary offerings, communicating investment updates to HSBC Private Bank’s relationship managers and investment counselors, and developing the marketing strategy. Camargo joined HSBC in 2017 from Voya Investment Management, where she was a senior fixed income portfolio specialist for five years. Prior to that, she was at ING, where she worked within its multi-asset strategies team.
Rafael Castellanos
Rafael Castellanos heads Credicorp Capital’s mutual funds, separate managed accounts, structured products and fund selection teams. He oversees a product platform of 70 funds that has over $1.2 billion in assets under management. Castellanos is also an executive director in the Peruvian firm’s asset management division and ran Credicorp’s multi-asset strategies as a fund manager before his current role. Prior to joining Credicorp in 2013, he worked within UBS’s wealth management Americas arm and Credit Suisse’s wealth management Latin America team. Where are you currently focusing your research efforts? Lately, we have been focusing our analysis on increasing our exposure to alternative investments. These non-traditional investments now have a wide range of options, such as illiquid, semi-liquid and liquid strategies. We are analyzing these options to complement our asset allocation and reduce volatility. We are looking closely at real estate and private debt funds, both in developed markets and in the Latin American countries we already have a presence in, namely Peru, Colombia and Chile.
Ernesto Delgado
At Inteligo, Ernesto Delgado leads a team of product specialists that is responsible for analyzing international mutual funds and products that are used by the Peruvian firm’s financial advisors. He joined Inteligo in 2014. Prior to that, he spent five years at BBVA, first as head of asset management for its Peru business and then as head of commercial development for its network of local banks. He also spent close to two years as president of the committee of mutual funds for Peru’s banking trade body, ASBANC.
Fernando Duran
Fernando Duran is responsible for Banorte Private Bank’s investment strategy, product selection and model portfolios. The firm operates an open architecture platform which includes products ranging from structured notes to mutual funds. Duran’s team acts as the liaison between Banorte’s product teams and financial advisors. Once his team has analyzed and recommended an investment product, it has to receive final approval from the firm’s committee of investment products before it can be included on the platform. Prior to joining Banorte in 2011, Duran was head of global product sales at Ixe Private Bank in Mexico. What skills do you need to succeed in your business? In my view, you need to be a critical thinker, a good communicator, have analytical and decision-making abilities, and have excellent people management skills.
Maria Fernanda Diaz
Maria Fernanda Diaz is an experienced operator within the field of international investments. She is currently in charge of the unit that builds and structures Bancolombia’s investment strategies and distributes them to the firm’s institutional, corporate, private and retail clients. She has been with Bancolombia for most of her career and has held a number of roles, most of which have been focused on finding new investment solutions for her clients and overseeing international strategies.
Richard Fraser
Richard Fraser oversees the selection of private market, hedge fund and long-only funds for Deutsche Bank’s private banking clients in the US and Latin America. Having joined the firm in 2015, Fraser was appointed his current role earlier this year. He is also global head of private markets for the group’s private bank. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Fraser spent 15 years at GE Capital, where he held a variety of positions within the real estate and private equity group as an underwriter and portfolio manager. Deutsche Bank’s offshore platform currently includes around 80 Ucits mutual funds and more than 600 Ucits ETFs. Where are you currently focusing your research efforts? In terms of new areas that we want to add to the platform, we are currently focused on adding to our ESG offerings across our SMAs, ETPs and mutual funds. Additionally, we are focusing on technology and healthcare managers.
William Gambardella
William Gambardella oversees the construction of Morgan Stanley’s international offshore model portfolios, which are available through the wirehouse’s advisory platform. As a member of the group’s manager solutions team, Gambardella draws from Morgan Stanley’s research and its global investment manager analysis unit to find the best mutual funds to include in his firm’s offshore model portfolios. Gambardella joined Morgan Stanley in 2016 from Credit Suisse, where he had been for almost 10 years. He started off in due diligence at the Swiss firm, then moved to portfolio construction, before becoming an investment consultant to the firm’s private bankers.
Worst manager meetings
Having a face-to-face meeting with a fund manager isn’t always smooth sailing. Five fund selectors talk ‘off the record’ about their most memorable encounters
Andrew Harradine
Andrew Harradine is head of mutual funds research at EFG Asset Management, the investment entity of the Switzerland-based global private banking group. His team provides investment ideas to EFG’s discretionary portfolio managers and supports the company’s advisory channel with strategies for their private bankers. He joined EFG in 2010 and previously spent 14 years at Russell Investments as head of European research, focusing on manager research. During his tenure, he led the European equity manager research team and worked closely with large pension funds, providing advice on manager selection.
Maria Hernandez
Maria Hernandez oversees product research and selection for BBVA Compass in Houston. She leads product development and strategy implementation and is also responsible for managing the promotion, pricing and launch of new products for her group’s investment solutions unit. Hernandez has been with BBVA for four years. Prior to joining the Spanish group’s US-based business in 2015, she was a compliance specialist in licensing and registration for advisory firm Sanders Morris Harris for two years. She had held a similar role at Invesco between 2011 and 2013.
Mirko Joldzic
Mirko Joldzic is head of a four-person offshore fund selection team at UBS Financial Services. He oversees a $15 billion product platform that includes more than 1,000 funds from over 60 asset managers. Joldzic focuses on the day-to-day management of the firm’s offshore and institutional money market businesses. He is responsible for supporting fund distribution within all of the company’s brokerage and advisory platforms, enhancing the advisor and client experience, and managing business and regulatory risk. He joined UBS in 2011 and has more than 10 years of financial services product management experience. Where are you currently focusing your research efforts? We are always looking to improve our fund menu, but we never make decisions in a vacuum. We partner with other parts of the organization to identify target themes for the year. Current top themes include liquid alternatives, sustainable investments, growth/value and intermediate fixed income.
Note: Since this magazine was published Mirko Joldzic has left UBS to join Raymond James.
Daniel Lanyon
Daniel Lanyon has been with Chile’s Bice for 10 years and is part of its asset and wealth management division. He leads its multi-asset and foreign equity unit, which carries out due diligence for the close-to 2,500 mutual funds available on Bice’s product platform. Before Bice’s investment unit, Lanyon worked in its insurance group for nine years, studying financial markets and how they would impact the group’s asset allocation strategy. Lanyon started his career in 2007 as an investment analyst at Chilean financial group Euroamerica. What is the toughest part of your job? The toughest part of my job is staying the course and maintaining our conviction despite market volatility and ensuring we focus on the long-term fundamentals.
Ariel Bezalel joined Jupiter in 1997 and is Head of Strategy, Fixed Income, working alongside Fund Manager Harry Richards and the wider credit team. What is your current view of the macroeconomic environment? This is a fascinating time for fixed income markets and 2019 could well turn out to be quite a milestone. The key question for investors at the moment is whether we are witnessing a mid-cycle slowdown or an end-of-cycle slowdown; given what we are seeing from a macro perspective we believe it is the latter. We believe we are late in the economic cycle, and over the last year and a half we have grown gradually more cautious. The current economic expansion is now the longest in US history since records began in 1854, which by itself should be a sign for caution. We also note a multitude of macro and market warning signals, from the rise in “covenant-lite” credit and “zombie” firms kept alive by low rates, to persistently deteriorating growth and trade data in key hubs across Asia and Europe, record corporate debt in the US, and flattening or inverted yield curves. An added driver of much of the weakness we are currently seeing is the slowdown in China, which is feeding through into Europe and elsewhere. It’s a broad-based weakness – around 60% of global PMIs are currently below 50 (75% of PMIs below the 50 mark would signify a global recession). At the same time, global debt levels are rising, particularly corporate debt in the US. The fact that there is already so much debt in the system means that any stimulus from the authorities seems transitory: the positive effects of 2018’s US tax cuts are now evaporating, and there are signs that US growth will slow in the second half of 2019. Cyclical bellwethers give the same indications. The copper price is sluggish, and oil is not trading well, despite big supply shocks. Trade data from bellwether economies such as South Korea and Malaysia are also weak. What is your current view on US interest rates? The Federal Reserve ("Fed") has very little ammunition left to stimulate the economy, given they remain constrained by their huge balance sheet and interest rates that are still close to historic lows at 2-2.25%. In post-war history, the Fed has cut rates by about 4.5% on average in the face of a downturn. The Fed appears to be framing the economy through a mid-1990s lens, when then-Chairman Alan Greenspan implemented so-called “insurance” rate cuts in 1995 and 1998 to sustain the US expansion. But we don’t believe that this is a mid-cycle slowdown and we think it’s unlikely that mere dovishness will be enough to drive a sustainable rally. It typically takes 12 to 15 months for a rate hike to fully filter through to the real economy so, from where we sit, the full impact from the Fed’s three rate hikes last year is yet to fully manifest itself. We expect the Fed will end up having to cut rates even more aggressively because we don’t expect the economic data to recover in the second half of this year. In fact, over the next year and a half, we believe rates are likely to drop back to the lows in the US and there may even be another round of quantitative easing. Where can a cautious fixed income investor find returns in this environment, in your view? Concerns about the macro environment are pushing government bond yields lower. Given US Treasury yields typically fall over the course of rate cutting cycles, we still like US Treasuries and other developed bond markets despite the big rally we have had year-to-date. We think the US 10-year Treasury yield is set to converge with government bond yields in Europe and Japan. We also see an opportunity in Australian government bonds, where yield have collapsed thanks to strong signs that the economy is now late-cycle and the ongoing downward trend in the housing market. Yields on Australian 10-year debt are currently 0.9% and we think they could move a lot lower. For these reasons, we believe a barbell approach is a prudent approach for fixed income investing right now, balancing AAA-rated sovereign bonds with higher yielding select credit opportunities. One example of a high yielding credit opportunity that is independent of the global macro trajectory is debt issued by protein-producing companies particularly those from the US and Brazil. The aftermath of the African swine flu outbreak in China this year has led to consumers looking elsewhere fo their protein and we believe the Chinese authorities are heavily understating total losses to their hog herd. Consequently, we are starting to see a real shortage of protein emerge and this is having global ramifications. Hog prices have moved up sharply and we are witnessing a knock-on impact in the beef and poultry markets as the substitution effect kicks in. We see the shortage of protein as a structural problem that will be entrenched for the next three to five years.
For professional or institutional investors only. It is not intended for the general public or residents of the United States, Canada or U.S. persons. It is not investment advice and does not constitute an offer or solicitation for services or to buy or sell securities. The views expressed are those of the author at the time of writing and are not necessarily those of Jupiter as a whole and may change in the future. Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the information but no assurance or warranties are given. Market and exchange rate movements can cause the value of an investment to fall as well as rise, and you may get back less than originally invested. Issued by Jupiter Asset Management Limited (JAM), registered address: The Zig Zag Building, 70 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6SQ, authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Alejandro Arevalo joined Jupiter in 2016 and is the Head of the Emerging Market Debt team. Prior to joining Jupiter, Alejandro was an emerging markets corporate debt portfolio manager at Pioneer Investments and an emerging market debt strategist at Standard Bank Asset Management, Gibraltar Bank and the International Bank of Miami. What do you think the key risks are for investors now? The biggest risk for investors going forward, in our opinion, is a continued global economic slowdown. Manufacturing PMIs across 28 countries are now in contractionary territory and on top of that there is ongoing uncertainty over the US-China trade situation. Against this backdrop emerging market (EM) debt offers a double advantage. The first advantage is breadth and diversity. As an asset class, EM debt covers countries at various stages of the economic cycle: even during the 2008 financial crisis, not every emerging economy experienced recession. The second advantage is yield. In contrast to the $17 trillion of developed market bonds with negative yields, EM debt still offers positive returns. Although some investors are nervous that spreads have tightened recently, we would argue that at 320 basis points (bps), spreads are still comfortably within the 250bps-450bps range set over the last five years. Rather than tightening too far, they have moved closer to the average over that period. What is your investment process and how do you go about implementing it? The first step of the investment process is to understand the global macroeconomic environment. We look at the drivers of developed markets such as the US, Europe and Japan, because conditions there dictate the spread investors require from EM investing. We then consider how the macro outlook affects EM, and how we should be positioned in order to take advantage of, or mitigate, the conditions we are seeing. In an environment of weaker global growth, we take a more defensive position: more investment grade debt, and a focus on countries with stronger current account balances that are better placed to avoid shocks. The third step is to look at valuations. As emerging markets continue to grow, we are seeing more and more bond issuance. We use initial screening to slice and dice this expanding universe, looking for valuations that seem attractive to us, as well as searching out specific names within sectors. After that, we focus on fundamental value. While screens might uncover a number of names that seem cheap at first glance, there’s often a reason for that price weakness. Our aim is to find bonds that the market has mispriced. Once we’ve identified these, we conduct a deep analysis of the credit fundamentals. This is the vital stage and it entails a large amount of intensive on-the-ground research. We speak to company management but also to competitors, politicians and journalists in order to get a full picture of the macro and political environment as well as the operating environment. Not only does this approach help to mitigate risk, it underscores our commitment to careful stewardship of client assets. What are your current views on Asia? Asia makes up around 37% of the JP Morgan CEMBI Broad Diversified Index; however, we regard spreads in three of the main countries – South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore – as very tight and therefore are less attractive from a risk-reward perspective. In fact, there are now reports that JP Morgan, the index provider, might drop these countries from the benchmark altogether because most investors consider these markets to be effectively developed rather than being part of the emerging universe. What are your general views about debt in Latin America, and opportunities in the region? We see opportunity in debt from Latin America, in particular from Brazil. The Bolsonaro administration continues to push forward pension reforms, which we think will spur growth and thus be a game-changer for the economy. We are positive on the consumer sector, specifically Brazilian beef producers. Over the medium to long term, we believe beef producers could benefit from the African swine flu outbreak in China, which has already had a strong impact on protein prices and import demand. We also like the pulp and paper sector in Brazil, which is seeing high demand from China. With limited new supply coming in, we think these sectors will continue to benefit.
Talib Sheikh joined Jupiter in 2018 and is Head of Strategy, Multi-Asset. Before joining Jupiter, Talib was managing director and portfolio manager at JP Morgan Asset Management where he worked for 20 years and was a founding member of the Multi-Asset Solutions team in 2004. What’s your approach to delivering income in a world where yields keep falling? We don’t deny yields are lower today but we also think investors need to be aware that as yields have fallen, risk has increased, so it’s a double problem. It’s really important to be honest with investors about the right level of yield relative to the risk you want to take. We think it’s a bad solution for clients if, as income gets harder to find, a fund manager takes too much risk or starts to pay income out of capital. That said, there still are good levels of income available if you are willing to be flexible, understand what you’re investing in, and manage risk. This means seeking income from the broadest possible range of sources and being to some extent asset-class agnostic. You need to look beyond traditional sources of yield while remaining diversified and disciplined about the risks you take. What’s your team composition and how do you generate ideas? The Jupiter Multi-Asset team is both dedicated and focused, with access to the fund management talent of the Jupiter investment floor. We hired Mark Richards, Investment Strategist, from JP Morgan in January 2019; with a background in macro research and equity strategy, Mark takes lead responsibility for developing our team’s macro view. Together with my Assistant Fund Manager Joseph Chapman, who specialises in quantitative analysis and risk management, Mark and I are the main portfolio managers on the team. We were joined by Matthew Morgan from BlackRock as Product Specialist in April this year. Our idea generation process begins with forming a macro view, which feeds into our top-down asset allocation. Every quarter the Multi-Asset team sits down with a range of colleagues from the Jupiter fund management team, to form a bottom-up view of performance potential and income in each underlying asset class. Our team also has monthly and weekly meetings to discuss the macro view and portfolio positioning. There is a very collegiate style on the investment floor at Jupiter; our team works alongside the 70 investment professionals at Jupiter, where information sharing is constant and is a key source of ideas for the portfolio. What are the keys issues for risk assets right now? Over the past few months we have been treading a fine line between continued robust consumer and services data supported by loose monetary policy on the one hand, and fears of manufacturing slowdown combined with the impact of global trade tensions causing recession on the other. In the late summer, markets rushed headlong in the latter direction, driving ever more deeply inverted yield curves and a sell-off in risk assets. The “bear” case is that manufacturing and industrial production were showing signs of slowing even before the trade war escalated, and we are already in the longest US cycle in history. Central banks have been quick to react to these warning signs, but investors are increasingly concerned that monetary policy alone can’t arrest the slide. On top of this, equity valuations don’t give much of a cushion for further upside. On the other hand, it’s important to remember that consumer indicators remain healthy, particularly in the US. The recent collapse in interest rates will have a stimulating effect on markets, and more policy help is promised. Money is cheap, which makes anything more than a mild recession hard to foresee. Trump is heavily incentivised to dampen trade tensions if they risk causing a recession in re-election year. Conclusion: we are wary that doom-andgloom and recession indicators may be overdone, but it’s too early to be certain that the consumer and central banks have the wherewithal to extend the cycle again just yet.
Juliana Maeda
Juliana Maeda leads the fund selection team at Brazil’s Bradesco Private Bank and has been with the firm since 2015. Her research feeds into Bradesco’s strategy of offering tailored investment solutions in an open architecture format and is used to build the client portfolios for its advisory services. Prior to joining Bradesco, Maeda was an associate at Brazilian private equity firm Bozano Investimentos, which rebranded as Crescera Investimentos. Earlier in her career, she focused on investor relations and worked at GP Investments and Patria Investimentos.
Martin Marron
Martin Marron is the chief executive officer of JP Morgan in Latin America and Canada. He is also the head of private banking in Latin America and oversees the group’s advisors, who select the products to include in client portfolios. Marron joined the firm in 1992 as a fixed income trader in Argentina. He has worked for JP Morgan in its Brazil and US branches. What skills do you need to succeed in your business? As technology allows us to do things faster, I see discipline as a vital skill to promote productive habits. In addition, good judgement, which comes from observing the world and listening to others, is a key tool to help evaluate responses and make good decisions.
José María Martínez-Sanjuán
José María Martínez-Sanjuán leads a team that analyzes and selects traditional and alternative funds from third-party asset managers at Santander. Based in London and Madrid, their research and product selection is used by the group’s wealth managers and portfolio builders around the world. Martínez-Sanjuán has been involved in fund selection and manager research for 15 years. He has been leading Santander’s efforts since he joined from fellow Spanish group Banif in 2011, where he was its head of fund selection and alternative investments. Prior to this, he worked at Banco Urquijo in Spain as head of its multi-manager team within its asset management arm.
Eliza Pepper
Eliza Pepper has been with XP Securities, the US-based arm of Brazilian firm XP Investimentos, since early 2018. She oversees asset allocation and manager research within its XP Advisory division and leads a team of five people in New York and two in Brazil. She has more than 30 years of industry experience and was previously the head of manager selection for another Brazilian group, Itaú USA Asset Management, in New York. During her career, Pepper has led research teams and managed hedge funds and multi-asset portfolios for institutional and high net worth clients. Where are you currently focusing your research efforts? We have been turning our attention to portfolio managers who run long/short technology funds, and we are looking at small/niche opportunities in hedge funds.
Esteban Polidura
Esteban Polidura is responsible for communicating Julius Baer’s investment strategy, overseeing its implementation in portfolios, and developing products and solutions for the firm’s Latin American markets. He has more than 23 years of experience in the financial sector as an analyst and strategist. Before joining Julius Baer in early 2019, Polidura was UBS’s chief investment officer in Mexico and Deutsche Bank’s head of equity research in Latin America. What skills do you need to succeed in your business? Many young people tend to think that technical skills are what’s needed to perform in this job. They are indeed important, but far from being everything. Interpersonal and communication skills are important, too, as the job demands not only working as a team but, in many instances, leading that team. And, of course, there is also our constant interaction with our clients. Strong work ethic, adaptability and the capacity to work under pressure are also important.
Matthew Pusak
Matthew Pusak is a product manager for offshore mutual funds and offshore ETFs at Merrill Lynch. In this role, he manages new managers and strategies, as well as the execution of product-related projects. He also partners with analysts from the wirehouse’s chief investment office due diligence team to ensure coverage of the products which supports the firm’s estimated 350 US-based international wealth advisors. He is a member of the global investment solutions team, which oversees an offshore product platform of around 300 mutual funds and 1,000 ETFs.
Miguel Reyes
Miguel Reyes heads the investment products team at Insigneo, where he oversees a product platform that includes funds from more than 40 asset managers and has access to all actively traded Ucits ETFs. His main goal is to create a suite of products and services that help the group’s financial advisors build their clients’ portfolios. He has been with Insigneo since 2006, most notably as head of sales and trading for acquired Global Investor Services. What is the toughest part of your job? I am constantly focused on creating an environment that mitigates the cognitive biases that we all possess – namely, finding the right balance between euphoria when markets are ripping higher and the fear and panic that ensues when they are in free fall.
Sergio Rivero
Sergio Rivero is a veteran of the Chilean group Banchile, having joined the firm in 2000. His role as head of multi-asset products has him oversee the group’s research and maanger selection across a variety of products, from mutual funds to structured products. His team currently includes Natalia Villagra, a product specialist and fund selector who has been with Banchile since 2008. The group’s third-party product platform is made up of 91 offshore mutual funds and 84 ETFs that cover a wide range of asset classes and sectors.
Guilherme Salgueiro
Guilherme Salgueiro has been in the investment industry since 2001 and has been working for BTG Pactual for 10 years. From 2009, he worked in the firm’s manager research and selection team and was appointed as the head of its US-based unit in July. His team oversees a product platform made up of over 70 funds that cover traditional and alternative asset classes. Prior to joining BTG Pactual, Salgueiro worked at Claritas Investments in São Paulo, where he was a risk manager and fund of funds analyst. What is the toughest part of your job? Time management is a big challenge. We have had more than 3,000 manager interviews since 2009. Then, measuring our time, identifying priorities and focusing on untapped potentials is key to finding the best opportunities.
Carlos Samaniego
Carlos Samaniego leads the products team at BG Valores, the brokerage and private banking unit of Panama’s Banco General. He is a member of a team of investment professionals that caters to predominantly Panamanian high net worth clients, with around 15% of their clientele being international investors. Samaniego and his team are in charge of selecting investment products and international mutual funds for an ‘approved product list’ for their 50-strong brokerage unit.
Robert Sherwood
Robert Sherwood is part of Wells Fargo Advisors’ international private client services division and a senior member of the product and fund selection team for the firm’s international financial advisors. He joined Wells Fargo in early 2018 from Banco Santander, where he was a senior portfolio advisor for six years. Sherwood started his career in 1998 at Citi Private Bank in New York as a fixed income strategist. He has also worked for UBS as an investment consultant. Wells Fargo Advisors’ offshore product platform includes mutual funds and strategies from 24 asset managers. The firm currently has around 330 international financial advisors.
Carla Sierra
As head of investments for Uruguayan wealth manager Aiva, Carla Sierra oversees the teams that manage the group’s model portfolios and offer investment support to its financial advisors. She has over 20 years of experience in the private banking industry. Before joining Aiva, Sierra worked for over seven years at Banque Heritage as an advisory manager. Prior to that, she worked at Itaú BBA Offshore for 10 years. The group’s offshore product platform, which currently has $1.5 billion in assets under management (AUM), forms part of Aiva’s total $9 billion in AUM. If you weren’t in this job, what would you be doing? I would be a travel writer. I have visited many countries and always kept a diary. It would be wonderful to convert this love into a job, although I’m not sure anyone would read any of my stories!
Jimmy André Solis
Jimmy André Solis oversees Panamanian private bank Global Bank’s investment funds and runs its global, fixed income and real estate funds. His role includes leading a team of analysts, who research and analyze opportunities in global markets and monitor their selected mutual funds for their clients. Prior to joining Global Bank in 2016, he worked at Credit Suisse in Panama for nearly two years as an investment and advisory specialist. Where are you currently focusing your research efforts? Right now, we are monitoring our current investments, and we’re also interested in certain alternative investments to diversify our portfolios. Given the market volatility over the past few weeks, we have been focusing a lot of our attention on our local market, which tends to be a bit more stable and offers interesting return opportunities.
Lucas Toro Duque
Lucas Toro Duque heads Colombian broker-dealer Davivienda’s international unit. He oversees its global investment strategy and manager research team. He is in constant contact with the asset managers on their product platform to ensure they are fulfilling their investment goals and that their strategy meets the firm’s asset allocation requirements. Toro joined Davividenda in 2018. Prior to that, he worked as a global bond strategist at Itaú and Corpbanca in Colombia. Where are you focusing your research efforts? In terms of fund selection and other types of investments right now, we are focusing heavily on improving the technology tools we use for portfolio management. We believe that having the right tools for this job will allow us to efficiently meet our targets without sacrificing client service.
Santiago Ulloa
Santiago Ulloa founded WE Family Offices in 2013. The Miami-based multi-family office has $10 billion in client assets. The group’s clientele is split 50/50 between US domestic and international offshore clients, the latter being mostly from Latin America. Ulloa oversees a research team that carries out fund selection for their client portfolios. WE’s product platform includes over 60 mutual funds from third-party asset managers. What do you like to do outside of work? Every year I try to climb a big mountain. I go without access to email, telephones, anything. It might take me over a week, but it clears my mind and gives me time to think strategically about the future. I think it’s one of the most important times of the year for me.
Pablo Vergara
Pablo Vergara is head of the fund selection team that forms part of Chilean firm LarrainVial’s strategy unit. The unit, which is made up of 17 members, helps select investment products and build portfolios for the firm’s wealth management clients. Vergara’s responsibilities include overseeing the selection of onshore and offshore products and searching for new asset managers to include on the firm’s product platform. LarrainVial currently offers access to more than 3,000 funds and all US-domiciled ETFs. Vergara joined the firm in 2011. Prior to his current role, he worked in the strategy team’s asset allocation unit for three years. If you weren’t in this job, what would you be doing? When I was younger, I wanted to be an agricultural engineer. If I had taken that career path, I would probably be working in a vineyard, rather than looking at statistics from Bloomberg and Morningstar.
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