Mesirow unloads $300M international equity team

Mesirow Financial Holdings Inc. has sold its $300 million international equity team to registered investment adviser Roosevelt Investments. Roosevelt acquired the seven-person team, led by Leila Heckman, and its four separately managed account strategies. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Katie Schimmel, spokeswoman for Mesirow, declined to comment on the sale or the future of international equity at Mesirow. Adam Sheer, president of Roosevelt, said the firm looked at around 200 potential targets before zeroing in on the Mesirow team. The majority of Roosevelt's $3 billion in assets under management are in its all-cap domestic strategy, so adding an international equity team will allow it to broaden the strategies it can offer clients. Roosevelt also has a 15-person sales team, which Mr. Sheer said is “pretty big” for a firm of Roosevelt's size. The company wants to give that team more products to sell. Roosevelt gets a distribution boost as part of the package, too. Ms. Heckman's strategies are already used by JPMorgan Chase & Co., with which Roosevelt doesn't currently have a relationship. The strategies are also used at UBS AG and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, which also employs Roosevelt's all-cap strategy. The four separately managed account strategies use a quantitative model to rotate between single-country international exchange-traded funds. The strategies cover both developed and emerging markets. Mr. Sheer isn't done with acquisitions just yet. He's also looking to add small- and midcap managers, because the good ones can quickly reach their size constraints, he said. In addition, he wants to acquire a municipal bond manager to round out the fixed-income team. Roosevelt's strategies are available to high-net-worth individuals, institutions and private clients and have a minimum investment of $100,000. The sale gives Mesirow $58.8 billion in assets under management.