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October 25, 2010 at 05:30 AM
“It was like a hand in glove,” explains Gurinder Ahluwalia in describing Genworth’s assessment of Altegris, the alternative investments provider that Genworth announced Oct. 19 it would acquire for $35 million. Once the advisors—mostly RIAs and independent broker-dealer reps—who use Genworth Financial Wealth Management’s (GWFM’s) platform voiced a clear need for giving their clients access to alternative investments, Genworth’s due diligence search for an alternatives provider led it to Altegris.
“About 18 months ago,” Ahluwalia, CEO of GFWM, said in an interview on Oct. 21, “our clients gave us the feedback that while they loved our platform, they needed alternatives. So we started identifying managers we could work with,”and Altegris came to fit the bill, since its “people, culture and values were the same as ours.”
Most important to Ahluwalia, Altegris’s and GWFM’s business philosophy were the same, noting that “rarely in life do all these match up so well.” Ahluwalia said, “We’re an open architecture shop,” like Altegris, said Ahluwalia, but Altegris’s products are based on the work of a “phenomenal” research team, built on the firm’s integrity and attention to risk management.
(One of the members of that research team, Altegris’s Matt Osborne, blogs on managed futures for AdvisorOne.com.)
After the acquisition, which Ahluwalia says is expected to close by year-end, “Altegris will remain a separate brand with its leadership intact, and while GWFM-affiliated advisors will then gain access to Altegris’s managed futures and hedge fund products, Ahluwalia said there might well be other alternative investing vehicles that will be rolled out.
