Overview

Maria Negrete-Gruson
Artisan Partners Sustainable Emerging Markets Team Annual Sustainable Investing Report 2020

Team Highlights

The investment team benefits from extensive emerging markets experience, continuity of its investment professionals and a rigorous research process.

  • All team members focus exclusively on finding emerging markets companies that offer sustainable returns on equity but fit tightly monitored risk and valuation parameters.
  • The investment team is composed of 6 individuals averaging more than 22 years of emerging markets investment experience.
  • The team is supported by an experienced global trading desk that averages more than 15 years of experience in global markets.
  • The team is principally based in New York.

Investment Process

The team seeks to invest in companies that are uniquely positioned to benefit from the growth potential in emerging markets and that possess a sustainable global competitive advantage.

Sustainable Earnings

The team believes that over the long term a stock’s price is directly related to the company’s ability to deliver sustainable earnings. The team determines a company’s sustainable earnings based upon financial and strategic analyses. The team’s financial analysis of a company’s balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows focuses on identifying historical drivers of return on equity. The team’s strategic analysis examines a company’s competitive advantages and financial strength to assess sustainability.

Risk Analysis

The team believes a disciplined risk framework allows greater focus on fundamental stock selection. The team incorporates its assessment of company-specific, sustainability and macroeconomic risks into its valuation analysis to develop a risk-adjusted target price. The team’s risk-rating assessment includes a review of incident-based and empirical ESG factors and country-appropriate macroeconomic risk factors to which a company is exposed.

Valuation

The team believes investment opportunities develop when businesses with sustainable earnings are undervalued relative to peers and historical industry, country and regional valuations. The team values a business and develops a price target for a company based on its assessment of the business’s sustainable earnings and risk analysis.

In-depth Investment Process

 

Management
  • Maria Negrete-Gruson, CFA
  • Portfolio Manager
  • Sustainable Emerging Markets Strategy
  • 30Years Investment
    Experience

Maria Negrete-Gruson, CFA, is a managing director of Artisan Partners and a portfolio manager on the Sustainable Emerging Markets team. In this role, she is the portfolio manager for the Artisan Sustainable Emerging Markets Strategy.

Prior to joining Artisan Partners in April 2006, Ms. Negrete-Gruson was the portfolio manager for DuPont Capital Management’s emerging markets equity portfolios. Before assuming responsibilities as portfolio manager, she was an international equity analyst at DuPont covering the developed Asia-ex Japan region. Earlier in her career, she was a foreign exchange trader for Banco Ganadero in Bogotá, Colombia. Ms. Negrete-Gruson holds a bachelor’s degree in finance and international relations from Universidad Externado in Colombia and a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia Business School. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.