Gene Needles and his team are partnering up with a familiar, publicly traded ally across the pond for a new product aimed at the core part of investors' portfolios.

Gene L. Needles, Jr. Resolute Investment Managers / American Beacon Advisors Chairman, CEO

Earlier this month, Needles unveiled American Beacon Advisors' [profile] newest mutual, the American Beacon AHL TargetRisk Fund. The fund launched on December 31, is subadvised by London-based AHL Partners (Man AHL, a subsidiary of Man Group), and comes in three flavors: institutional shares (AHTIX), investor shares (AHTPX), and Y shares (AHTYX).

Eric Burl Man Group Head of Americas, Co-Head of Global Sales

"My hope is that this becomes a core holding for many clients here," says Needles, chairman and CEO of American Beacon (and of the Irving, Texas-based multi-manager fund firm's private equity-backed parent, Resolute Investment Managers. "This is something that I've been trying to find ... a manager who would have a global allocation strategy that could provide something like equity-like returns with less volatility."

This is the third American Beacon fund powered by Man Group. Man AHL already subadvises the American Beacon AHL Managed Futures Strategy Fund, while Man GLG subadvises the American Beacon GLG Total Return Fund. American Beacon is currently Man Group's sole mutual fund partner in the U.S.

"We like to partner with folks that we've already partnered with," Needles tells MFWire. "It's pretty easy, particularly if they have a great strategy like this, to partner with them again."

The new fund invests across equities, fixed income, and commodities, mostly through derivatives. Man AHL has been running a version of the strategy in Europe, and it has "kept up pretty well with the equity markets when they were running but also it protected well on the downside," Needles says.

"When correlations start to rise rapidly among diverse asset classes, they dial down risk," Needles says.

Eric Burl, head of Americas and co-head of global sales at Man Group, tells MFWire that they've "been pretty pleased with the relationship" with Needles and his team.

"Partnering with them has delivered what we've wanted, and I hope that we've done the same with them," Burl says. "They have gotten us into conversations and relationships that we certainly wouldn't have been able to do ourselves."

There are no other Man Group-powered American Beacon funds "in the hopper at the moment", Burl says, noting that "the bar is set high" for them to launch new funds.

As for this new fund, Burl notes that it's their first American Beacon product "that is in a very broad category in terms of where it fits in a client's portfolio."

Man AHL includes about 150 investment professionals and worked with $25.1 billion in AUM as of September 30, 2018, out of Man Group's $114.1 billion in AUM. Resolute's affiliates had $71.2 billion in AUM as of September 30, including $59.1 billion at American Beacon. 

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