A Midwestern multi-boutique asset manager is diving into the ETF business and is broadening its marketing effort accordingly.

Gary Henson Montage Investments President, Chief Investment Officer

Last week Montage Investments [profile] affiliate Tortoise Holdings launched its first ETF, indeed the first ETF from any of Montage's boutiques. To do so, Tortoise Holdings launched Tortoise Index Solutions, a sister company to Tortoise Capital Advisors. Watch for the Montage team to help their other affiliates into the ETF space, too.

"We are in the process of working through some other index-like solutions through the ETF wrapper under several of the other boutiques," Gary Henson, president and chief investment officer of Leawood, Kansas-based Montage. (Tortoise is based in Leawood, too.) "They would use the Montage Managers Trust."

Henson says Montage will use the same distribution and marketing teams for the new ETF and for other passive products down the line. Yet he expects to do more "B2C" (business to consumer) marketing, in addition to the advisor-focused B2B marketing Montage already does. They've built out a website and are in talks to do some advertising in publications that Henson calls "traditional B2C media."

The new ETF is the Tortoise North American Pipeline Fund, which tracks Tortoise's own North American Pipeline Index. Tortoise Index Solutions also offers two other indexes: the Tortoise MLP Index and the Tortoise Oil & gas Producers Index. "This is our first passive launch," Henson says. "Our investors now have an active opportunity if they want it ... or they can go passive."

Tortoise manages closed-end funds as well as traditional open-end mutual funds and it had about $18 billion in AUM as of May 31. Montage's boutiques have a total of more than $25 billion in AUM. 

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE