Overture Asset Managers has formed a long-term strategic partnership with Chicago-based ForestView Partners. New York City-based Overture was created by a small team of executives from the asset management industry who see an opportunity to bring sales and marketing skills to boutique money managers.

"We are built on the premise that some of the brightest talent out there is at small firms," Douglas L. DuMond, president and CEO of Overture told the MutualFundWire.com. "We are not just financial buyers. The space that we are focused on is boutique asset management firms firm with $250 mm to $5 billion in assets that lack the scale in distribution and operations."

DuMond said that three members of the senior management team own 90 percent of Overture with the remainder owned by a firm that he declined to identify. The other members of the management team include: Mona Aboelnaga, vice chairman, chief operating officer, James Coley, II, vice chairman of client management and development and Charles Bonan, managing director, corporate communications.

The partnership with ForestView brings Overture additional expertise on both the deals it is looking at and what it needs to do to develop its business. The two firms said that they are looking at doing deals jointly. ForestView is headed by Thomas I. Florence, who built Morningstar's investment advisory business and served as the president of that unit until the end of 2002. This is the second strategic partnership formed by Overture. It struck the other with CRA Rogers Casey.

Last month Overture completed its first deal when it purchased Avatar Associates. DuMond added that Overture is now evaluating the growth potential of the three funds Avatar sponsors. "They were an accommodation for a pension client and they had never been marketed," he noted.

DuMond said Avatar also manages some $400 million for affluent investors in separately managed accounts and another $1 billion in institutional accounts.  

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