Mediolanum International Funds is investing nearly $600m with Pzena Investment Management and two other boutiques as it continues to allocate capital across a growing range of global asset managers.
The $57bn Dublin-based firm has struck agreements with New York-based Pzena, London-based Mondrian Investment Partners and London and Sydney-based listed infrastructure manager ATLAS.
Mediolanum is looking to invest over $12bn with specialist boutique managers in the next five years.
$54bn Pzena will see an initial allocation of €220m ($262m) towards its global value strategy. The global value portfolio is benchmark agnostic and will typically hold 60 stocks in total. The allocation will sit within Mediolanum’s Dynamic International Value Opportunity Fund.
“Evidence suggests that we are in the early stages of what is likely to be a powerful and enduring period of outperformance for value stocks,” said Sander van Ouwerkerk, head of Pzena’s Europe and director of business development and client services.
Around $12.2bn is split across global strategies at Pzena, with $7bn in the Pzena Global Focused Value, $3.2bn in the Pzena Global Value and $2bn in the Pzena Global Value All Country.
Mediolanum will also be allocating an initial €220m to $56.4bn Mondrian’s global equity strategy. The value-based strategy invests in global equity securities in developed countries. Mondrian utilizes a dividend methodology, where valuations are calculated on anticipating future dividends. Its portfolio usually holds 35-50 stocks.
MIFL has also contributed an initial €70m to ATLAS’ global infrastructure fund.
These investments continue a string of recent activity for Mediolanum, including investments with Virtus Investment Partners subsidiary Sustainable Growth Advisers and NZS Capital in early March. MIFL has also struck deals with European based boutiques Cadence Investment Partners, Intermede Investment Partners and RWC Partners.
In an interview with Fund Intelligence in March, the allocator said it was hunting for value and credit managers.
CEO Furio Pietribiasi said the firm was primarily looking across liquid categories and had no specific requirements for company AuM, fund size or ESG capabilities.
MIFL is targeting “entrepreneurially-minded” managers that it can accelerate growth for, according to Pietribiasi. He said MIFL wants to subsequently give any partnered managers a foothold in Europe that they may have otherwise lacked because of hesitation around distribution capabilities or market risk.
