Harbor Capital Advisors has again partnered with Westfield Capital Management Company, to launch the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF (GDIV).
The existing Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund, a series of The Advisors’ Inner Circle Fund II, will be merged into the newly established active ETF, which is expected to launch in late May. Along with ETFs, Harbor offers a curated experience of mutual funds and collective investment trusts (CITs). The reorganisation is subject to approval by shareholders of the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund.
“We are thrilled to extend our long-term strategic partnership with Westfield, providing advisors and investors with another vehicle to access our firm’s investment strategies,” says Kristof Gleich, President & CIO. “Fully transparent actively managed ETFs have the potential to help clients meet their long-term investment goals and we will continue to build out Harbor’s ETF franchise with talented, institutional-caliber asset managers like Westfield.”
“We are excited for the current investors in the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund to benefit from much lower fees and a more tax efficient vehicle,” says Will Muggia, President, CEO & CIO and Portfolio Manager of Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund.
Westfield and Harbor’s strategic partnership dates back over 20 years with Westfield managing Harbor’s Small Cap Growth Fund since 2000 and also managing a sleeve of the Harbor Disruption & Innovation Strategy.
Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF will pursue an actively managed strategy that seeks long-term growth of capital and income by investing in a relatively concentrated portfolio of primarily large capitalisation companies with a history or prospect of paying stable or increasing dividends, as determined by the portfolio manager and investment team.
The Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF will be sub-advised by Westfield and will pursue the same investment strategy that the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund has pursued since its inception in 2013. Will Muggia, who currently serves as the Portfolio Manager of the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund and is the largest individual investor in the Fund, will serve as the Portfolio Manager of the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF. The firm writes that Muggia has over 35 years of experience investing in US equities and leverages the fundamental research of an experienced and tenured investment team. The investment team’s strategy employs a bottom-up process to identify companies that meet the team’s fundamental criteria and then performs a qualitative review of each identified company to select companies for inclusion in the fund’s portfolio.
