The investment professionals at FIS Group are thought leaders within the entrepreneurial manager space. As such, we conduct ongoing research within the space, and collect data that supports the value proposition and thesis for employing entrepreneurial managers in investment portfolios.

In 2007, Tina Byles Williams and Xiaofan Yang published a white paper entitled, “Performance Drivers For Emerging Managers.” In 2008, this study was updated to further examine the performance characteristics of developing versus established investment management firms. The purpose of the study is to determine whether there are significant relationships between asset levels that traditionally determine a manager’s status as emerging and various measurements of risk adjusted return. FIS Group’s CIO and CEO, Tina Byles Williams recently published a follow-up to this study, entitled “Survival of the Nimble”, which examines the reasons emerging managers outperformed their established manager peers over the market cycle ended December 31, 2010. Despite this challenging environment, the paper demonstrates that emerging managers outperformed their established manager peers and more importantly, provides a statistical analysis that examines the potential sources for their outperformance.

These studies have been profiled in several emerging manager and mainstream financial publications and we welcome the opportunity to share them with our clients and prospects. Additionally, this research is discussed by FIS Group at various industry educational conferences, which we actively sponsor and support. FIS Group hosts bi-annual client educational conferences, which serve to apprise FIS Group’s distinguished list of institutional clients and prospects of the recent developments at FIS Group and within the emerging manager industry at large.