Steve Graziano and his team are re-teaming with a subadvisor that is to be acquired.

Steve Graziano Touchstone Investments President

Graziano, president of Touchstone Investments [profile], confirms that the Cincinnati-based subadvised mutual fund shop is launching the Touchstone International Growth Fund. The fund is subvised by a familiar firm, Apex Capital Management.

MFWire could not immediately reach Nitin Kumbhani, founder and chief investment officer at Dayton, Ohio-based Apex, for comment on the launch.

"They have a strategy, a retail SMA strategy, that's highly regarded and that's done exceptionally well in the past five years," Grazino tells MFWire. "Their performance is really stellar."

Graziano notes that Apex is also a "high active share manager", a key plus in his book. And Apex already subadvises another Touchstone fund, meaning that the teams on both sides already know each other.

Meanwhile, the new fund launch comes as Apex is being acquired by a publicly-traded Canadian asset manager, Fiera. That deal, Graziano says, will not change Touchstone's relationship with Apex.

"We have no worries. We're happy for them," Graziano says, noting that "a prerequisie of the deal is that the senior management stays intact for a period of seven years. 

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