Russell Veterans Launch Acuitas Investments

According to a recent press release, Acuitas’s initial focus will be on offering a Microcap product to institutions and high net worth investors. For the company’s first offering, a multi-manager fund launched in the second quarter, Acuitas seeded new products from established investment managers with a history of success buying small stocks. 

The press release stated that the firm’s investment team seeks to leverage what it believes are the inherent inefficiencies of certain asset classes and financial markets to deliver returns for institutional and high net work clients.  

“Passive management is gaining favor when it comes to large-cap equities and other areas where the majority of active managers do not beat their respective benchmarks,” Tessin noted. “Where active management becomes invaluable is in these inefficient corners of the marketplace, such as the Microcap space, where talented asset managers continue to deliver significant alpha for investors.” 

The two partners managed more than $16 billion in combined assets at Russell, and together bring more than 35 years of investment experience to the new firm.  

Before Acuitas, Tessin acted as lead Portfolio Manager for Russell’s Micro, Small, and Smid-Cap products. Jensen served as a Senior Research Analyst responsible for both U.S. Equity and Alternative strategies, and was lead Portfolio Manager of U.S. Quantitative and Style Equity products at Russell.  

A former member of Russell’s capital markets research division, Brian Stoner, has also joined Acuitas and is a shareholder in the firm. 

“In today’s highly competitive environment, we believe that being independent and employee-owned allows us to more closely align the firm’s interests with those of our clients,” said Jensen.  

More information about the firm is available here. 

-Sara Kelly