Occupying the top spot is Belle Haven Investments' Brian Steeves, manager of the Transamerica Intermediate Muni fund. Steeves, 31, who hails from Wappingers Falls, New York, is among the youngest managers in the Citywire database.
Municipal bonds have had a great three years, with portfolio managers in this category regularly topping our global lists, as the steady risk-reward profile in this market has been ripe for consistent outperformance. However, after an astonishing run, the last three months of 2016 was something of a cold shower, with the intermediate index falling 4 percent.
This resulted in some $20 billion of outflows from actively managed muni portfolios. This left the sector with a small negative return of -0.3 percent for the full calendar year. Despite the turbulent end to 2016, Steeves' strategy still broke even. There is an old adage that an active manager really proves their worth when times get tough, so watch this space.
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The category with the most managers represented on this list was Indian equities. Four of the 20 managers ply their trade here, and all of them are Indian-educated, reflecting the truly global nature of investment.
The top of this set is Vinay Agarwal, 39, who comes in third on the list for his management of the First State Indian Subcontinent and First State Regional India funds. First State is one of the premier emerging market fund shops in the world, and its expertise in India has been the source of much of their outperformance in recent years.
As mentioned earlier, portfolio management is an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry, and only one portfolio manager on this list was female.