PEOPLE: NEW CHIEF GIVING GAM A LEG UP

Of Global Asset Management’s $10.7 billion under management, only about $300 million comes from individual U.S. high-net-worth investors.

Mary Lehman MacLachlan wants to change that.

Ms. MacLachlan, 51, who briefly ran a high-net-worth advisory firm in Florida after helping build the private-banking businesses at Bankers Trust New York Corp. and U.S. Trust Corp., has returned to the Big Apple as president of GAM’s U.S. private client group, a newly created position.

With her hiring, the London-based international money manager is looking to grab its share of the growing U.S. wealthy-investor market.

A retail secret

Outside of institutional investors and their consultants, GAM is something of a secret in the United States.

“They’re pretty well known in the U.K. and Europe,” says Kevin McDevitt, an analyst with Morningstar Inc., the mutual funds rating firm in Chicago. “Here, that’s not really the case.”

But GAM has begun to make inroads with U.S. retail investors through its nine mutual funds, which have garnered $1.9 billion in less than two years. They’re sold largely through commissioned brokers at Merrill Lynch & Co. and other wirehouses.

Now, the firm is moving to infiltrate the relatively small circle of $100-million-plus investment management consultants who serve wealthy individuals and family offices. The firm’s main weapon in that task: Ms. MacLachlan’s prodigious Rolodex.

“I’ve been in this business a long time; I know a lot of people,” she says.

Also on board: Evan Roth, who has come over from Goldman Sachs & Co.’s private-client business to serve as GAM’s chief marketing officer.

As a marketer, Ms. MacLachlan has been on both sides of the name-recognition spectrum.

Most recently, she helped Private Capital Management in Naples, Fla. — founded by the Colliers, a Forbes 400 family — double its assets to $2.2 billion from less than $1 billion in 18 months. But Private Capital Management is a specialty shop with one product line — domest
ic small-cap equities.

“Small-cap equity can’t grow indefinitely,” Ms. MacLachlan says.

Before that, she was in charge of global business development for Bankers Trust’s private bank, about a $15 billion operation when she left two years ago.

How private was it?

“When I was at Bankers Trust, you at least had heard of it,” she says. “When I went to Private Capital Management, whoever you were, you had never heard of Private Capital Management. Now I come to GAM, which is a little bit of a combination.”

GAM does have some name recognition, and more importantly, a strong-performing set of funds.

Its flagship GAM Global and GAM International funds both have attained the top Morningstar rating, five stars. Both are among the top three performers in their classes.

Meantime, the firm’s other offerings — concentrating on the likes of Japan, the Pacific Basin and Europe — are above-average performers, too.

“They’ve done a fantastic job,” Morningstar’s Mr. McDevitt says. “They add value in a lot of areas other managers can’t. They’ve been superb in hedging currencies.”

“I really think that the basic resources are here,” says Ms. MacLachlan, “and it’s just a matter of getting the message out.”