First Eagle Investment Management lifted out four people from Royce Investment Partners to establish its new small-cap equity investment team, spokeswoman Hedda Nadler confirmed in an email.
Bill Hench will lead the new small-cap team as portfolio manager, Suzanne Franks and Rob Kosowsky are associate portfolio managers, and Adam Mielnik is a senior research analyst.
The team is based in New York, and Mr. Hench will report to Mehdi Mahmud, president and CEO.
At Royce Investment, Mr. Hench was lead portfolio manager of the small-cap opportunistic value equity strategy, Ms. Franks and Mr. Kosowsky were assistant portfolio managers, and Mr. Mielnik was a senior analyst. Royce spokeswoman Stacey Coleman confirmed that Boniface Zaino, managing director and portfolio manager, will lead the portfolio team replacing them, which includes portfolio managers James P. Stoeffel, Brendan J. Hartman and James Harvey.
First Eagle Investment Management had $109 billion in assets under management as of March 31.
