Alan Bartlett

Alan is one of the three-person portfolio management team for Goodhart’s Real Return strategy. He is a Partner and Board member of Goodhart Partners LLP, with responsibility for oversight of the investment function.

The Real Return strategy aims to compound real absolute returns over the long term. The net market exposure of the Real Return strategy is flexible. When investment ideas are abundant, the strategy focuses on return and is tolerant of relatively high market exposure. When investment ideas are scarce, the strategy has the flexibility to reduce market risk, including by raising cash or hedging. The portfolio itself invests in 6-10 key themes, with the emphasis being on how they blend across a range of scenarios to create an asymmetric return profile. The Real Return team believes this combination of focus and flexibility (we call it “agile investing”) will be key to navigating markets over the coming decades, given that many of the structural drivers that have supported broad and inflexible investment approaches over the last 30 years are now in reverse. 

Alan has a diverse investment background. The earlier part of his career focused on manager selection and running multi-manager funds. Alan started his career in 1995 as an investment consultant and became Head of Manager Research at two of the largest consulting businesses in the UK (Hymans Robertson and Aon) before joining a startup multi-manager firm as Director of Research in 2001. In 2005 he approached the asset management division of WestLB bank with a plan to develop a highly investment-oriented multi-manager fund range. Working for a German bank was highly educational through the financial crisis. The funds Alan developed and managed during this period had a thematic approach that invested in niche investment opportunities that were structurally advantaged.

Alan co-founded Goodhart Partners in 2009 via a management buyout. Over the next 10 years at Goodhart he focused on creating and supporting boutique investment managers more directly. He began by launching a Japanese equity business focused on deep value smaller companies. Goodhart then acquired a minority interest in a boutique manager that focuses on discounted assets – Asset Value Investors – and managed the transition of the investment team to a new generation. The businesses that Goodhart worked with had very different approaches and focuses, but they were all fundamental, longer term, and seeking to exploit specific structural investment opportunities. 

In 2019 Alan joined Templeton Global Equity Group as CIO, overseeing c$70bn of global equity mandates. He is one of the few people in the world who can say they have restructured the investment team and process of a large asset manager during a global pandemic. Alan left Templeton in 2023 and returned to Goodhart with a vision to build an “agile” global equity boutique suited to navigating markets over the coming decades. Alan’s approach to investing remains thematic and with a clear focus on the sorts of opportunities generalist investors often struggle with. He is a long-term, structural thinker, with a clear framework for managing portfolios. 

Alan has an MSc in Investment Analysis and a BA (Hons) in Economic Policy, both from the University of Stirling, Scotland.