Royce boldly goes ... well, nowhere, really.

David_Snowball

Royce & Associates has just announced a bold rebranding strategy. It "better describes the breadth of the firm's business and the importance it places on the spirit of partnership with which the company has always conducted itself ... it better represent[s] to all of our constituents who we are now as a firm ... it better represent[s] the range of our strategies." With a boldness surely inspired by their be-bowtied, soon-to-be-octagenarian founder, Royce and Associates has become ...

Royce Investment Partners!

Ta da!

Uhhh ... R.I.P.? Was that an inspired choice for a firm who's seen assets decline 17% in the past 12 months and 75% in the decade?

Here's the 12 year correlation between their flagship Pennsylvania Mutual (PENNX) fund and the 11 next-oldest funds in their lineup:

0.99%
0.95
0.98
0.96
0.99
0.98
0.96
0.96
0.94
0.95
0.95

And that's after liquidating much of the sea of clones they launched after Legg Mason bought them.

I got a heads up about the change from a reader, Brett Schneider, who concludes, "The joke writes itself. RIP."

David

BECKMANB

Royce has gone from 34.32 billion in total assets in 2010 to 9.01 billion now per Morningstar, but even worse is Third Ave funds which had 10.53 billion in total assets in 2010 to 1.83 billion now. Massive drops indeed.

gmarceau

These firms are all going away, innovate or fall off.

TheShadow

Here is the news release from Royce regarding being Partners:

https://www.royceinvest.com/news/2019/4Q19/royce-associates-lp-rebrands-as-royce-investment-partners

Shostakovich

Grew disenchanted with Chuck & Co some time ago. Wife and I still hold RYSEX, but not for much longer. The copy-catting was always a thing for Royce, but they had a few standouts. It's gotten worse under LM. And, as I've called attention to here before, they do some clever but not so cool stuff in their semi-annual and annual reports to suppress the records of some of their poor performers (such as Chip Skinner's fund). Moreover, they had a tendency to benchmark against US indices, when their portfolios could be as much as 30% international.

The LM acquisition was not a plus for shareholders, nor was the jettison of Whitney George.

The re-branding downplays Chuck's role ever so slightly (it's not Chuck Royce & his merry band of fund creators), while still keeping the Royce name in play while it still has some currency.

Alas, it's tougher and tougher to find true fiduciaries. Royce never really was. The loss of AUM pleases me, in the sense that it indicates that the market of middle class investors has a voice, although I suspect much of this may be driven by the rise of passive / index investing.

LewisBraham

They should have never let David Nadel get away without making the right counter-offer.

Old_Joe

@Shostakovich- Haven't seen you around in a long time... glad to see that you're still with us. Happy holidays to you!

OJ

Shostakovich

Thanks, Joe; it's nice to be noticed, and nice to be missed.

Super busy at the day job; barely have time for bit of fun like posting here. Royce is easy fare, however, and a personal cause of mine, because their flim-flam is such easy pickings.

Best wishes to you and all here, whatever your traditions this time of year.

MOZART325

I also like Whitney George. He runs a closed-end fund -ticker FUND for Sprott. He eats his own cooking and personally owns around $80 million of FUND (or 38% of the shares).

VintageFreak

I sold my Royce funds as soon as I learnt Legg Mason owned them. Royce is simply famous for being famous.

Shostakovich

VintageFreak -- I wouldn't go that far. Royce had some very good funds. Zaino's was great in certain situations, so was Dreifus's. Beyond that however, a lot of copy-catting, flooding the market to see what sticks, misleading and selective benchmarking, etc.