Lazard announces launch of Systematic Equity Portfolio

NEW YORK, November 4, 2021 - Lazard Asset Management LLC (“LAM”) today announced the launch of the Lazard US Systematic Small Cap Equity Portfolio (Institutional: LUSIX; Open: LUSOX) (the “Fund”), a US mutual fund managed by the Lazard US Systematic Equity team.

The Lazard US Systematic Equity team is comprised of Oren Shiran, Stefan Tang, and Seavan Sternheim, who joined LAM in 2019 and have worked together since 2013. With an average of 16 years’ experience in the investment industry, the team has extensive expertise in fundamental and quantitative research. The Fund will follow the same long-only investment approach as the existing US Systematic Small Cap Equity strategy, which launched in 2015. The team also manages a long/short strategy.

“Technology is essential to the investment process today in a way that was unthinkable twenty years ago, but fundamental analysis is still a vital part of every investment decision,” said Oren Shiran, Portfolio Manager on the Lazard US Systematic Equity team. “We have developed a differentiated analytical framework designed to combine the merits of both fundamental and quantitative analysis to provide a more powerful and consistent solution for investors.”

The Fund invests primarily in equity securities of small capitalization companies within the range of the Russell 2000 Index. It is managed using a proprietary investment strategy that creates and applies what the team refers to as “Insights” and employs its “Insight-driven” process to identify investments with fundamental traits the team believes are undervalued by the market. The strategy combines fundamental and quantitative techniques into a fully systematic process – that is, the team converts subjective criteria used to evaluate potential investments into quantitative formulas based on, among other things, market observations and testing of resulting hypotheses.

“US small cap equities offer investors exposure to dynamic companies in an inefficient segment of the market,” said Ron Temple, Head of US Equity at LAM. “Our US Systematic Small Cap Equity Portfolio harnesses both technology and Lazard’s well-established expertise in fundamentally driven investing to offer investors access to this underappreciated opportunity.”

As of September 30, 2021, LAM managed more than $44 billion of client assets in US equity strategies.