Forward Announces Hire to Lead Alternative Investment Expansion

David Readerman will be working to expand Forward’s incubation of new investment strategies while enriching the firm’s investment research across equity product categories, according to the announcement. He will be lead portfolio manager for the first product he is helping Forward to develop, a global “go-anywhere” equity strategy.   

In addition to developing and managing alternative investment strategies, Readerman is serving as co-portfolio manager of the Forward Small Cap Equity Fund.   

Readerman joined Forward after a seven year tenure at Marsico Capital Management, where he was a senior investment analyst with research responsibilities in global equity portfolios spanning technology, energy, consumer, and industrial sectors. He was previously a founding partner with Thomas Weisel Partners Group, Inc., and earlier led the software and Internet teams at Montgomery Securities. His twenty years of sell-side experience included stints with Shearson Lehman Hutton and Smith Barney.   

Readerman holds an MBA in Finance from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

According to the announcement, in recent years Forward has built a set of 15 alternative mutual funds, separate account strategies and private funds representing over $3 billion in assets out of Forward’s total of $6.7 in assets under management (as of January 31, 2011). Under the heading of “alternative,” Forward includes products that either provide exposure to alternative asset classes, such as real estate, commodities, and frontier markets, or apply alternative techniques, such as hedging and long/short investing, to equity and fixed-income strategies.