Roger Ibbotson has found a new life in mutual funds after selling his eponymous business to Morningstar. Today his first two funds -- he is a subadvisor to two American Beacon Funds -- are open to investors. Those two funds will not be his only effort as Ibbotson tells Investment Advisor magazine that he is already working on ideas for new funds to be launched in the Fall.

The article does not say if the additional funds will also be sponsored by American Beacon.

Ibbotson sold his Ibbotson Associates to Morningstar in December 2005 (see The MFWire.com, 12/13/2005). The Yale professor founded that business to sell stock marker research to investors.

Now he is focusing his research skills on finding exploitable anomalies in the markets.

The two American Beacon Funds -- one investing in large cap stocks and one in small cap stocks -- are being advised by Zebra Capital, where Ibbotson is CIO.

American Beacon was born as the captive mutual fund arm for American Airlines relying entirely on a manager-of-managers approach for the airlines retirement programs. Two years ago it was purchased in a management-led leveraged buyout using private equity. TPG Capital led the private equity funding (
"The research we've done shows that whatever category you talk about, in the U.S. and around the world, there are incremental returns [you achieve] from including less liquid holdings," he explained. "Everywhere we've looked, we've found a liquidity premium, and we're talking about the public markets." 

Edited by: Sean Hanna, Editor in Chief


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