Cantor Fitzgerald Expands into Transition Management

Cantor Fitzgerald will move into a new service asset owners and pension funds after tapping the former head of JP Morgan’s disbanded transition management team.

Mike Gardner has joined the investment bank and brokerage as global head of portfolio solutions, where he will help asset owners with monitoring, measuring and managing risk across mandates, geographies and asset classes.

His appointment marks a new venture for Cantor Fitzgerald into transition management, which enables clients to move portfolios of securities from one manager to another.

“We designed this offering as a distinctly separate business line, with the aim of creating highly customized services to meet investors’ specific risk, return, correlation and liquidity objectives, on a platform of their choice. I look forward to leveraging Cantor’s global distribution platform and market-making capabilities, and helping clients manage their portfolio assets,” says Gardner.

According to Shawn Matthews, CEO of the bank, he anticipates “considerable demand for tailored risk management and restructuring solutions” and labelled the venture a “growing franchise”.

Cantor Fitzgerald is the second recent new entrant into the transition management market that saw many of its major players quit the scene in the past few years.

JP Morgan and Credit Suisse began shuttering their transitions service in May 2013, shortly followed by ConvergEx. In March 2014, BNY Mellon followed suite.