By Joshua Thurston From City Wire UK

RWC Partners has completed its acquisition of investment boutique Pensato Capital.

The acquisition of the firm set up by former Fidelity European fund manager Graham Clapp (pictured) will bring $280 million (£216 million) of client assets across to RWC, taking its total assets under management to $12 billion.

Clapp had spent 22 years at Fidelity where he managed the €25 billion (£22 billion) European Growth fund, prior to setting up the business in 2008.

Edward Rumble and Russell Champion, who worked with Clapp at Fidelity, are senior members of the seven-person investment team which will move across from Pensato to RWC.

At RWC, Clapp’s team will continue to manage three funds: the Europa fund, a long/short Cayman-domiciled fundamentally driven European equity fund; the Europa Absolute Return fund, a long/short Ucits vehicle managed on a pari passu basis to the Europa Fund; and the European Equity fund, a long-only Cayman-domiciled fund.

Two years ago, RWC hired an emerging and frontier markets equity team, including John Malloy and James Johnstone, who now manage around $3 billion on behalf of its clients.

Dan Mannix, chief executive officer, RWC, said: ‘Graham and his team offer a world class European equity capability in long-only and long-short strategies.  It’s a privilege to have the opportunity to work with such a respected team and we are excited that Graham chose RWC as the home for the next stage of development for his team.

‘We see real opportunity for active managers in European equities and we believe Graham’s energy, experience and talent make him one of the outstanding people in the asset class.’

Clapp added: ‘RWC is set up to provide its investment teams with the support and resources they require in order to concentrate on the delivery of outperformance for investors, and it was clear from our early conversations with Dan that its model was suited to us and the way we want to operate and manage money in the years to come.’

The Pensato Europa Absolute Return fund over the last three years has underperformed its peer group achieving an 8.3% return in a sector where the average fund returned 11.9%.

For more on this story go to: http://citywire.co.uk/wealth-manager/news/rwc-completes-boutique-buy/a1046423