American Beacon Home : About Us : Meet Our Sub-Advisors

Meet our Sub-Advisors

Name of Sub-Advisor

  • Location: Fort Worth, Texas

    American Beacon has more than 20 years of investment management experience. We offer a variety of products and investment advisory services to numerous institutional and retail clients, including mutual funds, corporate cash management and separate account management. Clients include defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans, foundations, endowments, corporations, financial planners and other institutional investors.

    In addition to managing and administrating the American Beacon Funds, American Beacon manages assets of the following funds:

  • Location: Dallas, Texas

    Barrow uses a value-oriented investment strategy to identify larger, well-known companies that they believe are undervalued and temporarily out of favor. Their portfolios consistently reflect all three traditional value characteristics: low price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, low price-to-book value (P/B) ratio and high dividend yield. Barrow's approach to the equity markets is based on their underlying philosophy that the inefficiencies in the market can be exploited through adherence to a value-oriented process dedicated to the selection of securities on a bottom-up basis.

    In fixed income, Barrow defines value as temporarily mispriced securities with yield-to-maturity advantages over Treasury bonds of comparable maturity. They identify each opportunity from the bottom up, building a duration-neutral portfolio designed to “out-yield” the market. In this way, Barrow seeks to achieve higher total returns for their fixed income clients with below-benchmark volatility.

    Barrow serves as a sub-advisor to the following funds:

  • Location: San Diego, California

    Brandes is a leading investment advisory firm, managing equity and fixed income assets for institutional and private clients worldwide. Since the firm's inception in 1974, it has applied the value investing approach to security selection pioneered by Benjamin Graham. Among the first investment firms to bring a global perspective to value investing, Brandes manages a variety of investment strategies, including its flagship International, Global and Emerging Markets products.

    Brandes serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

    Founded in 1986, Brandywine offers an array of equity, fixed income and balanced portfolios that invest in U.S. and global markets. Brandywine, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Legg Mason, Inc., believes that companies with the lowest stock prices relative to current earnings, book value and free cash flow provide superior returns over market cycles. They combine the proven success of value investing with an emphasis on buying leading companies with strong management, solid financial positions and favorable earnings prospects.

    Brandywine’s fixed income philosophy is a value-driven, active, strategic approach. They believe that a client’s portfolio should be invested in markets offering significant value, as defined by above-average real interest rates. They seek to capture excess returns through strategic investment in countries, currencies, sectors and securities, rather than by maintaining minimum, core commitments, reflective of the benchmark. Their investment strategy concentrates on top-down analysis of macroeconomic conditions to determine where the most attractive valuations exist.

    Brandywine serves as a sub-advisor to the following funds:

  • Location: Houston, Texas

    Bridgeway, a Houston-based investment management firm formed in 1993, offers expertly designed investment building blocks to select institutions and advisors. Statistically driven and grounded in academic theory, Bridgeway's disciplined investment process reflects a passion for evidence, data and logic. Putting investors' long-term interests first at all times is the cornerstone of the firm's unique culture and core business values of integrity, performance, cost efficiency and service.

    Bridgeway is committed to making a positive impact within the community at large and donates 50% of its investment advisory profits to non-profit organizations.

    Bridgeway serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Naperville, Illinois

    Calamos is an institutional money management firm that specializes in security research and money management. With roots dating back to 1977, the firm serves institutions and individuals via separately managed accounts and a family of open-end and closed-end funds, providing a risk-managed approach to capital appreciation and income-producing strategies. As an indirect subsidiary of Calamos Asset Management, Inc., Calamos offers a broad range of innovative strategies proven to capture upside while limiting downside across full market cycles.

    Calamos serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Los Angeles, California

    Causeway is an independently owned, international and global equity investment management firm that began operations in June 2001. Causeway specializes in managing international and global value equities, using a bottom-up approach and value-oriented criteria backed by fundamental research of international stocks in developed markets. Their clients include corporate, public and Taft-Hartley pension plans, mutual funds, endowments, foundations, corporations and individuals.

    Causeway serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Overland Park, Kansas

    DCM is an employee-owned registered investment advisor founded in March 2008. Prior to DCM, the firm’s founding principals worked together for many years at another Kansas City-based institutional investment management firm. DCM manages portfolios across the capitalization spectrum for institutional clients, financial intermediaries and advisors. As traditional value investors, DCM believes that: focusing on high quality companies that are undervalued for transitory reasons can lead to above-average returns; temporarily out of favor (neglected) industries are fertile ground for finding appealing long-term investment opportunities; and risk-adjusted performance can be enhanced by emphasizing stocks which exhibit the best risk/reward relationship (limited downside risk with meaningful upside potential).

    Dean serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Jersey City, New Jersey

    Dreman has invested in low P/E stocks for more than 30 years. The small cap equity strategy is consistent with all of the firm’s equity strategies and is applied diligently. Dreman believes that low P/E stocks have the best potential for outperformance over market cycles, and the firm’s studies indicate that the best values can be found in this pool. The firm buys stocks that it believes are temporarily undervalued, with the potential for meaningful earnings growth and price appreciation. The resulting portfolio is built with high conviction in long-term outperformance. Using this strategy, the key objective is to deliver excellent performance over a full market cycle relative to the benchmark and peer group.

    Dreman serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Red Bank, New Jersey

    Fox, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Eaton Vance, is a registered investment advisor that manages equity, fixed income and balanced portfolios. Their objectives are superior long-term total return and capital preservation, goals that are meant to help clients gain a level of comfort necessary to properly maintain a long-term perspective. The firm’s value-oriented equity strategy begins with a screening process that seeks to identify growing companies whose stocks sell at discounted price-to-earnings (P/E) and price-to-cash flow (P/CF) multiples. Fox favors such companies that maintain strong balance sheets and provide above-average dividend yields. The firm employs a disciplined bottom-up approach to identify undervalued stocks. They seek out emerging and established trends that point to profit growth not overly dependent on economic trends in their stock selections.

    Fox serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: San Mateo, California

    Franklin believes that superior high yield returns can be best captured through the disciplined application of a research-based approach that capitalizes on inefficiencies across the high yield market. Through rigorous bottom-up research, Franklin seeks to identify compelling total return opportunities with the potential to add value over a three-year to five-year horizon.

    Franklin serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: London, England

    GAM is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GAM Group AG, which in turn is a wholly-owned subsidiary of GAM Holdings AG, an independent asset management firm headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. GAM is an investment management company that specializes in global fixed income and currency markets. As an award-winning pioneer of absolute-return bond investing, GAM has managed unconstrained bond portfolios for more than seven years. They blend a top-down macro approach with fundamental bottom-up analysis across six fixed-income sectors to aim to produce consistent, positive returns. GAM gives equal emphasis to risk mitigation and portfolio diversification as they seek to protect on the downside.

    GAM serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Chicago, Illinois

    Established in 1991 as an SEC-registered investment advisor, Holland specializes in the investment management of large- and mid-cap growth equity strategies. The firm is 100% employee owned and managed, and is both minority- and female owned.

    Holland employs a high quality, conservative growth equity investment style. This approach reflects the investment team's basic belief that the value of conservative investing is "not losing it." The strategy provides participation in rising markets and protection in declining markets. Holland's philosophy is grounded in bottom up, fundamental research and its strength lies in individual stock analysis. Focusing on a three- to five-year investment horizon, the team seeks high quality companies with earnings that are growing faster than the general market; are selling at reasonable valuation; have strong balance sheets; superior managements; niche products or services with dominant competitive positioning; and insiders who are owners of the stock.

    Holland serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Los Angeles, California

    H&W believes that a value approach to portfolio management can provide superior long-term performance with below average volatility. Investor psychology can lead to irrational decisions resulting in the mispricing of stocks. H&W strives to exploit these opportunities by employing disciplined purchase and sell criteria, rigorous in-house fundamental research and a bottom-up stock selection process with emphasis on tangible valuation support. H&W has four major attributes: they’re experienced (track record of more than 30 years), dedicated (committed to independent, in-depth research), disciplined (consistent, time-proven value-oriented investment process) and independent (majority employee-owned).

    Hotchkis serves as a sub-advisor to the following funds:

  • Location: New York, New York

    Lazard, an SEC-registered investment advisor, is a subsidiary of Lazard Freres & Co. LLC. Lazard’s bottom-up fundamental investment process seeks to generate strong relative returns over a market cycle by investing in companies with strong and/or improving financial productivity at attractive valuations.

    Lazard’s distinguishing features include a global footprint, a broad-based team of more than 250 investment personnel worldwide, dedicated in-house research, a focus on security selection in the investment process, distribution across multiple channels and a strong commitment to excellence.

    Lazard serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Boston, Massachusetts

    Lee Munder, founded as a private partnership in 2000, provides investment management solutions to institutional and high net worth individuals. The firm’s value team applies a classic value investment style focusing on solid companies whose stock is temporarily out of favor in the market. The strategy emphasizes companies with higher returns on capital, free cash flow and strong balance sheets. These companies often dominate a particular industry niche. Generally, these industries have significant barriers to entry and, as a result, are able to perpetuate a higher return on capital over time. Additionally, the strategy will invest in more cyclical companies with somewhat lower returns on capital when the market does not currently appreciate the company’s long-term earnings.

    Lee Munder serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

    Logan is an institutional fixed-income asset management company that was founded by Jude T. Driscoll, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer, in April 2007. Prior to founding Logan, Mr. Driscoll was the President and CEO of Delaware Investments, where he was responsible for overseeing all firm activities. Logan began managing assets on November 1, 2007. On April 16, 2010, Logan was acquired by Fortress Investment Group, a publicly traded company (NYSE: FIG) and a leading global investment management firm, as its traditional asset management arm. Fortress was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in New York City. Logan is a fundamental research-driven, spread sector focused manager that has 14 product composites with strategies that cover the breadth of the yield curve, from short duration strategies to liability driven investing, and all risk tolerances from Core Fixed Income to High Yield and Emerging Markets.

    Logan serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Boston, Massachusetts

    Founded in 1924, MFS is one of the oldest investment management firms in the U.S. Today, MFS is a global investment manager with investment personnel in key financial centers worldwide, serving millions of individuals and hundreds of institutions in more than 70 countries. MFS leverages its global research platform to identify undervalued, high quality companies that have sustainable, durable franchises, generate significant free cash flow, maintain strong balance sheets and have strong management teams who are good stewards of capital. Their valuation approach is flexible and they place a strong emphasis on cash flow and returns-based methodologies. MFS focuses on downside risk management at the individual security level.

    MFS serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: New York, New York

    MSIM is a direct subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. MSIM combines a top-down country allocation investment approach with bottom-up stock selection. The top-down analysis focuses on countries with improving fundamentals and attractive valuation. Security analysis is a blend of growth and value, as the focus is on companies with attractive growth characteristics at reasonable valuations.

    MSIM serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: St. Louis, Missouri

    NISA is primarily a fixed income manager, specializing in creative and quantitative investment management solutions for its clients. NISA uses a highly analytical and quantitative approach toward fixed income investing and seeks to consistently add value through research and active trading. NISA has managed dedicated separate account TIPS portfolios since mid-1997.

    NISA serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Cincinnati, Ohio

    Opus is a registered investment advisor established in 1996. Opus’ investment philosophy is rooted in their belief that value-oriented, smaller companies offer the best prospects for capital appreciation over extended periods of time due to the inherent inefficiencies in this universe. Because of the limited attention given this area, there are numerous high-quality companies trading at significant discounts to their intrinsic values. Through Opus’ deep, fundamental research process, they uncover high-quality stocks that exhibit three specific attributes: low valuations, strong growth prospects and at least one key catalyst for stock price appreciation. Opus believes that consistently adhering to this philosophy leads to long-term outperformance for their clients.

    Opus serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Newport Beach, California

    PIMCO is a global investment management firm founded in 1971. The firm is a company of Allianz SE, located in Munich. The PIMCO fixed income team consists of more than 250 portfolio managers and research analysts across the spectrum of the fixed income sectors. The absolute return-oriented strategy is governed by PIMCO’s investment philosophy and unique, disciplined secular investment process, which focuses on long-term economic, social and political trends that may have lasting impacts on investment returns. The absolute return strategy invests in those ideas in which the firm has the strongest conviction resulting from PIMCO’s secular and cyclical thinking, global themes and integrated investment process without the constraints of a benchmark. Bottom-up strategies, including credit analysis, quantitative research and individual issue selection are then taken into account in conjunction with the top-down strategies in actively selecting the strategy’s portfolio positions, with careful consideration given to the dual objective of providing attractive risk-adjusted returns and mitigating the risk of capital losses over the long term.

    PIMCO serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

    PENN provides investment management services with emphasis on U.S. high yield fixed income and U.S. micro-cap to mid-cap equity. PENN was founded in 1987 and is an independent, 100% employee-owned company. A team approach to decision making is maintained, drawing on the expertise of 16 portfolio managers and analysts. All ideas are vetted by the entire team before ultimately being approved for the portfolio. The firm places capacity constraints on their strategies. This enables the team to identify risk in a company and react accordingly. Maintaining liquidity in holdings and ensuring that the strategies are managed consistently over time are top priorities and key tenets to the firm’s philosophy.

    PENN serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: New York, New York

    Pzena is a classic value investor that seeks to buy good businesses at low prices. They focus exclusively on companies whose stocks are selling in the cheapest 20% of the investable universe based on price to normal earnings and are typically underperforming their historically demonstrated earnings power. They apply intensive fundamental research to these companies. Companies are included in the portfolio when the following five criteria are met: (1) the current valuation is low compared to the company’s normalized earnings power, (2) current earnings are below historic norms, (3) the problems are judged to be temporary, (4) management has a viable strategy to generate earnings recovery and (5) there is meaningful downside protection in case the earnings recovery does not materialize. A concentrated portfolio exclusively focused on companies such as these should generate meaningful excess returns for long-term investors.

    Pzena serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Spokane, Washington

    Signia, founded in 2001, is a boutique money-management firm specializing in value investing. The firm’s research process identifies deep value companies that possess high quality capital structures combined with a fundamental catalyst to drive the company toward intrinsic value. Portfolio managers use a team approach that integrates the collective insight of each portfolio manager with the objectives of creating a well-diversified portfolio that will generate excess returns over the long term. Signia manages money for public and private pension funds nationwide and was founded by the investment professionals who serve as managing partners.

    Signia serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Boston, Massachusetts

    Standish is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. As a dedicated fixed income manager, Standish emphasizes fundamental research and quantitative models in the attempt to outperform agreed-upon client benchmarks. Standish has been using TIPS in multi-sector U.S. Core/Core Plus portfolios since 1997 when the U.S. Treasury first issued inflation-linked bonds.

    Standish serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Houston, Texas

    Stephens Investment Management Group, LLC (“SIMG”) was established in 2005 and specializes in equity investment management focused on small and mid-capitalization growth companies. SIMG is a subsidiary of Stephens Investments Holdings LLC, a privately held and family-owned company.

    SIMG serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Seattle, Washington

    SiM is an independent and 100% employee-owned company dedicated to providing superior investment management for institutional and individual clients. The Senior High Yield Team members have worked together for almost twenty years and previously managed the Principal High Yield-A Fund from its inception in 1998 until 2009. SiM analyzes industry fundamentals and company cash flows to take advantage of secular trends and to opportunistically invest in out-of-favor sectors. SiM also invests in alternative investments and instruments across the capital structure. Combined with a long investment horizon, this proven investment approach provides the foundation for achieving long-term client objectives. More information can be obtained at the company web site:  www.sim-llc.com

    SiM serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

    Templeton is indirectly owned by Franklin Resources, Inc., a global investment organization operating as Franklin Templeton Investments, which has more than 60 years of investment experience. Templeton believes in a disciplined, yet flexible, long-term approach to uncovering value-oriented investments regardless of current market trends on a worldwide scale.

    Templeton serves as a sub-advisor to:

  • Location: Boston, Massachusetts

    TBC was founded in 1970 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Boston Safe Deposit & Trust Company, one of the oldest financial institutions in the U.S. with origins dating back to the 1800s. TBC is part of BNY Mellon Asset Management, one of the world’s leading asset management organizations, encompassing BNY Mellon’s affiliated investment management firms and global distribution companies.

    TBC believes that successful investing is achieved through a program that is focused on valuation, to provide significant upside potential while mitigating downside risk; research, as a thorough understanding of company fundamentals is the key to determining value; and discipline, as consistent outperformance requires a disciplined, repeatable investment process.

    TBC serves as a sub-advisor to the following funds:

  • Location: Richmond, Virginia

    Founded in 1994 by Stephen M. Goddard as the dedicated equity advisor to First Colony Corporation — a publicly traded insurance company — The London Company now provides portfolio management services to a mix of institutional investors. The employee-owned firm is headquartered in Richmond, Virginia and is dedicated to delivering superior, consistent returns with lower downside risk.

    The London Company serves as a sub-advisor to the following fund:

  • Location: Milford, Connecticut

    Zebra Capital Management is an asset management firm founded in 2001 by Roger Ibbotson, a professor of finance at Yale University. Mr. Ibbotson founded Zebra to bring his research advantage and decades of equity market analysis to investors. Zebra’s strategies seek to generate strong performance, without incurring additional volatility or beta exposure.

    Zebra believes positive, long-term equity returns are driven by systematically exploiting market characteristics supported by basic, economic principles. By seeking out fundamentally strong, but overlooked, less demanded and undervalued securities, Zebra believes it can generate attractive returns without taking on significant levels of risk or leverage.

    Zebra serves as a sub-advisor to the following funds:

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