James Fletcher - ESG and EM with Ethos Invest

This week on Standard Deviations with Dr. Daniel Crosby, Dr. Crosby speaks with James Fletcher. James is an experienced Emerging Markets portfolio manager with a strong history of alpha generation and top quartile fund performance. Most recently James was the Director & Senior Portfolio Manager of the EM SMID Cap fund at APG Asset Management since 2016, where he managed a ~$1B portfolio, one of the largest EM SMID cap funds in the world. APG is the largest pension fund manager in the Netherlands and a global leader in ESG investing. From 2013 to 2016, James was the Lead Portfolio Manager at Kayne Anderson Rudnick’s EM Small Cap fund (ticker VIESX), a Morningstar 5-Star rated fund that was awarded 2015’s “Best Fund Product for High Net Worth Clients” by Private Asset Management. Previously James was Senior Analyst at Westwood Global Investments from 2005-2013. James is a CFA charterholder. He is also the founder of the global non-profit, Young Investors Society (www.yis.org). James has an undergraduate degree in Finance from Brigham Young University and is fluent in Portuguese and proficient in Spanish and has lived in Brazil and Hong Kong.

Tune in to hear:

- Of all times to start a boutique fund, why would James start one in the current climate where the 3 largest asset managers control  more of the market share than ever before?

- What edge does a small, boutique asset manager have in a world where there are such well-resourced competitors?

- How are ESG like suggestions typically met by the companies that James invests in?

- What’s it like to run a high conviction fund? How does James think about conviction and diversification and what lead him to take this unusually concentrated approach?

- Why does James think ESG screening is important and how, specifically, does he incorporate it into his process at Ethos?

- How does James think about ESG and investing in countries where the bar for ESG is set very low?

- What makes him think emerging markets, which have been priced attractively for many years now compared to the US and which have underperformed, are poised to do well in the future?

https://ethosinvest.com/

https://yis.org/

Compliance Code: 3115-OAS-12/15/2021

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