Arden Asset Management LLC (“Arden”), a leading independent fund of hedge funds manager, and Robeco Group (“Robeco”) today announced an agreement under which Robeco will transfer to Arden its $1.3 billion fund of hedge funds business, Robeco-Sage, effective October 1, 2011. Given the complementary nature of the Robeco-Sage business to Arden, coupled with the large overlap in underlying managers used by both firms, this transaction provides Arden with increased scale and a strong foundation for future growth.
Averell Mortimer, Arden’s President and Chief Executive Officer, said, “We are very excited about this transaction and look forward to continuing to serve our combined investor base with a broad range of institutional multi-manager hedge fund portfolios as we strategically expand our business.”
Roderick Munsters, Chief Executive Officer of Robeco Group, said, “This agreement brings together two of the industry’s most respected and longest tenured firms with 35 years of combined experience. We believe this transaction provides significant benefits to our investors through increased resources, including investment talent, leading edge technology, and infrastructure. We remain committed to the fund of funds business and intend to retain our substantial investments in the Sage funds.”
Under the terms of the agreement, certain of Robeco-Sage’s investment, client service and operations professionals will join Arden. Paul Platkin, Chief Investment Officer, and Darren Wolf, Head of Research, will join the Arden investment team and will continue to manage the Robeco-Sage portfolios on a day-to-day basis with oversight from the Arden Investment Committee. Arden’s existing funds and customized portfolios will continue to be managed in exactly the same manner as previously had been the case by Arden’s Investment Committee.
Henry Davis, Managing Director and Member of Arden’s Investment Committee, added, “The integration of Robeco-Sage’s portfolio resources and team provides greater depth of industry knowledge, further enhancing Arden’s investment capabilities and information advantage for the benefit of all investors.”
Ronald Tauber, co-founder of Robeco-Sage, said, “Arden is a highly respected franchise with a strong, scalable multi-manager platform and world-class infrastructure. Arden has a proven track record of successfully integrating hedge fund of funds programs and their investors into their business. We expect our clients to benefit from Arden’s skills and 17 years of experience managing absolute return programs across all market cycles.”
