After buying a nearby, 15-year-old boutique earlier this year, a three-state mutual fund firm's team will prep more fixed income products. Meanwhile, they're still on the M&A hunt, too.

Dennis Patrick Clark Shelton Capital Management Managing Director

"The driver ... is that investors are looking for yield and cash flow alternatives in this persistent low-yield environment," Dennis Clark, managing director of Shelton Capital Management [profile], tells MFWire. "We're going to get together as a group and decide what we can do as a team to satisfy that demand."

On January 25, Denver, Colorado-based Shelton acquired Greenwich, Connecticut-based Cedar Ridge Partners. In the process, Shelton is adopting Cedar Ridge's mutual fund, the Cedar Ridge Unconstrained Credit Fund (watch for Shelton to rebrand that fund down the line). Cedar Ridge PMs Guy Benstead, David Falk, Alan Hart, and Jeff Rosenkranz all joined Shelton as part of the deal.

"We got: a team of four very capable, experienced portfolio managers; a mutual fund that's got a great track record and about $70 million of AUM; and a separate account strategy," Clark says. "It's been a fantastic fit, both culturally and from a business perspective ... The kewpie doll was that their branch office was located less than a mile from ours."

"We are very pleased to have the entire investment team at Cedar Ridge join us and to continue to successfully manage their unique and highly regarded alternative fixed income strategies," states Steve Rogers, CEO of Shelton.

With the addition of the Cedar Ridge team, Shelton now has six fixed income PMs, Clark says, and that means they can build out more fixed income products.

Rogers puts the Cedar Ridge deal in the context of his "long-term strategy of building scale organically and through acquisitions."

"Shelton Capital Management is an acquirer," Clark says. "The reality is, it's an extremely difficult environment for small to mid-sized asset management firms selling actively managed mutual funds. With dislocation and these headwinds, mergers and acquisitions and consolidation in general is a viable, sustainable strategy."

The Shelton team is open to fund mergers (for strategies similar to existing Shelton strategies) and liftouts or outright acquisitions like Cedar Ridge for whole teams that bring new expertise to the firm.

34-year-old Shelton now has more than $1.85 billion in AUM (as of the end December) and about 35 people between its Denver, Greenwich, and San Francisco offices. The San Francisco team is about to move to a new office four blocks away. 

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