Harbor Capital Advisors has launched the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF (GDIV), adding to its line-up of active, fully transparent ETFs.
The Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund assets have been acquired by Harbor and merged into the newly established active ETF. The management of the fund and its investment strategy will remain the same. Along with ETFs, Harbor offers what it calls a curated experience of mutual funds and collective investment trusts (CITs).
“We are thrilled to extend our long-term strategic partnership with Westfield Capital Management, providing advisers and investors with another high conviction investment solution. Westfield has been adding value for our client base for over 20 years and counting. The timing could not be better, as investing in companies focused on growing their dividends with pricing power should help clients navigate this new regime of higher inflation and lower real growth, which we expect to continue,” says Kristof Gleich, Harbor Capital 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, exceptional and truly active investors 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, Westfield Capital Management President, CEO & CIO and Portfolio Manager of the Westfield Capital Dividend Growth Fund.
Westfield’s and Harbor’s strategic partnership dates back over 20 years with Westfield managing Harbor’s Small Cap Growth Fund since 2000 and managing a sleeve of the Harbor Disruption & Innovation Strategy since 2021.
The firm writes that GDIV will pursue an actively managed strategy that seeks long-term growth of capital 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 pursued since its inception in 2013.
Will Muggia serves as the Portfolio Manager of the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF, the firm writes. 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 securities for inclusion in the Fund’s portfolio.
