Manager Research

Granate was founded by RMI Investment Managers (RMI IM) as a fixed interest house (originally called RMI Specialist Managers) in 2015, and ex-Cadiz fixed income portfolio managers Jonathan Myerson and Bronwyn Blood were brought in to manage the process. We covered the business and their fixed income process in 2018, but we had concerns with their viability as a fixed income manager given their scale (scale is incredibly important for a fixed income manager), the maturity of the business as a whole and the second order effects of this on staff retention and business stability going forward.  Accordingly we have maintained a Tier 3 rating since inception on their Unconstrained Fixed Interest Fund and Multi Income Fund.

We recently received notification of material changes to the direction of the business, both from an investment focus and staff perspective. Firstly, Granate’s current Head of Fixed Income, Jonathan Myerson, resigned and will be moving over to Visio Capital to head up their fixed income process. Visio Capital is an affiliate of Royal Investment Managers (RIM), which is an associate company of RMI. Jonathan is also the portfolio manager of the Granate Unconstrained Fixed Interest fund, and this fund will be moved to Visio Capital subject to regulatory approval. Jonathan will leave Granate at the end of June.

Granate also announced that Paul Bosman and Henno Vermaak will be joining the team in June to build out their multi-asset offering. Paul and Henno worked together at PSG in the past. Paul developed PSG’s multi-asset process and was the manager of the PSG Stable and Balanced funds until his resignation last year. Henno managed the PSG global funds before leaving in 2016 to start his own boutique investment manager called Capensis Capital.

Overall, these are material changes to the business and we would expect more changes going forward given the redirection of their core focus to multi-asset. We have retained our Tier 3 ratings on the Granate Unconstrained Fixed Interest Fund and the Granate Multi Income Fund.