HEAD-TO-HEAD: AB versus Blackrock

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Manager review

Lead manager Kurt Feuerman has been running the strategy since 2005 at his hedge fund firm Caxton Associates. He transferred it, together with his team, to AB in 2012, according to Wolfstetter.

Anthony Nappy, who worked with Feuerman from 2000-2009 at Caxton, re-joined the team at AB in 2011 as a senior analyst and was promoted to co-manager in 2015.

Both managers, especially Feuerman, are very experienced managers, according to Wolfstetter. However, she noted that there have been several changes in the analyst team, which has shrunk to two from five over the past two years.

“We don’t think that the turnover on the analyst side is ideal, but we have high conviction on the lead manager. He is very experienced, and he is the right guy for this kind of research,” she said.

However, given that she believes that the process is difficult to replicate, Wolfstetter said that the product is at risk if Feuerman were to leave the firm.

Turning to the Blackrock fund, Wolfstetter said that there have been recent changes in the team’s management.

In 2017, Todd Burnside took over the fund from Peter Stournaras. Burnside has been responsible for fundamental research on US large-caps since joining Blackrock in 2008.

Burnside is supported by co-manager Joe Wolfe, who has helped build the fund’s quant screens since 2012.

They are both supported by a 20-member team, which has been in existence only since March 2017.

Wolfstetter believes that the product has seen a lot of management changes, with the firm continuing to add and subtract people. Although it has more resources now, Wolfstetter wants to see the team settle down.

“Overall, the changes in the process make sense, so no big issues there. It’s just that there has been quite a lot of moving parts within the fund, with the process changes together with the changes within the team. So that has to settle down a bit and that’s why we are still neutral [with the fund].”

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