Legg Mason’s EnTrust has dropped the Permal moniker and rebranded to EnTrust Global to reflect a move toward more non-traditional alternative investment structures.
“We don’t want to be seen as a fund-of-funds business,” Gregg Hymowitz, chairman and CEO of EnTrust Global and chair of its investment committee, told HFM InvestHedge.
“The Permal name has had great standing among non-US institutional investors, but it’s seen more in the marketplace as a traditional fund of funds.
“We wanted to make it very clear that the future of the business is more in these different types of strategies, but at the same time it’s a massively global business.”
The rebrand comes roughly three years after Legg Mason merged EnTrust Capital, an independent alternative asset manager, with its alts affiliate The Permal Group, to form EnTrust Permal, with a combined $29bn in AuM at the time of the transaction.
As part of the deal, Legg Mason took a 65% stake in the new entity, with the remaining 35% owned by Hymowitz.
The merger gave EnTrust, which had a mostly US investor base, access to London-headquartered Permal’s international clients.
However, for the past 10 years, EnTrust had been building out non-traditional alternatives such as its co-investment business, which now represents $8.5bn of its $19.3bn in total assets.
The firm also has maritime and aviation lending investment strategies and is keeping its eyes on other transportation sectors.
“Today the business is more co-investments, direct lending, then we still have a very significant core hedge fund business, but that business now resides mostly in separate accounts,” he said.
“It’s large institutional investors who come to us and say, ‘help me build a hedge fund portfolio.’ That hedge fund portfolio now typically includes co-investments, shipping where appropriate, and ultimately also includes aviation. That’s been the evolution of the business.”
The firm serves 700 institutional investors in 47 different countries.
In December, it announced the addition of Svein Engh and Sophia Mullen to its management committee as part of moves to diversify its product offering.
Engh is the portfolio manager for the firm’s Blue Ocean Maritime Income Fund, which EnTrust is looking to raise $250m for.
Mullen is co-head of co-investment research at EnTrust, having joined in 2013.
As of the middle of 2018, the New York-headquartered firm had made 105 co-investments and exited 45, delivering a 14% net return to investors, it told HFM InvestHedge at the time.
Legg Mason’s EnTrust drops Permal tag, shuns FoHF image on HFM InvestHedge.