In an effort to expand its U.S. distribution and accelerate growth in assets under management, the Govett Funds, San Francisco, virtually shut down its in-house wholesale marketing operations and teamed up with a third-party distributor.
Govett formed a marketing distribution agreement with American Capital Asset Management, Houston, the firm that recently announced it would be merging with Van Kampen Merritt Advisory.
Consequently, of Govett's seven wholesalers, one left three weeks ago to become a certified financial planner. The other six marketers have interviews with American Capital.
Govett runs less than $300 million in seven international funds: international equity; global government income; emerging markets; global smaller companies; Pacific; Latin America and developing markets bonds. The last three funds were launched this year.
"We have been marketing since January of 1992 and have not penetrated" the market to the extent that was expected, said Deborah Kemper, vice president and director of marketing of Govett.
A link with American Capital will give Govett much-needed access to larger national and regional brokerage firms, banks and qualified retirement plans. At the same time, it will give American Capital a full line of international products.
The funds are managed by John Govett & Co., London.
"We wanted to develop a more extensive range of products, including domestic products, and wanted to benefit from their distribution network," Ms. Kemper said.
The Govett funds will be marketed alongside American Capital's $16 billion in mutual funds, and investors will be able to exchange between both fund families. While American Capital does offer some global equity funds, they don't resemble Govett's, she said.
