Pyramis Global Advisors isn’t your average asset manager.

The eight-year-old firm manages $188 billion — more than the GDP of Middle-East petrostate Qatar — from the fairly obscure New England town of Smithfield, Rhode Island (population 20,000).

That situation in itself is not especially unusual in the decidedly low-profile business of investing money on behalf of giant pensions, endowments, and foundations. What is unique about Pyramis is that its parent company is just an hour and a half away in Boston — and that parent is Fidelity Management and Research, arguably the world’s best-known investment firm.

Pyramis works both angles into its value proposition.

“We feel strongly that the way we can most cleanly add value consistently for our clients is by enabling our portfolio managers to focus on their particular approach to outperforming the benchmark, while using the tools and resources that our organization can bring to bear,” said Young Chin, Pyramis’ chief investment officer.

Pyramis was formed in 2005 to focus on institutional investors, who typically have different wants and needs than the individual investors Fidelity is known for targeting via television commercials featuring green lines and folksy, plain-talking fund manager Peter Lynch.

“We are a manufacturer of products that are specifically tailored to the institutional marketplace,” Chin told Markets Media in a March 14 interview at Fidelity’s Boston headquarters. “We are also a window, or portal, into the broader Fidelity offerings that are relevant for institutional investors, and we distribute all products from within Fidelity.”

“We’re also a partner with Fidelity with respect to our investment platform, so we can leverage each other’s skill sets, especially with research,” Chin continued. “In many ways on the investment-platform side we try to have the best of both worlds — we have a separate carve-out so we can focus on the products and needs of institutional investors, but we’re also part of a much larger organization that includes the broader research platform across Fidelity.”  

SEE THE FULL STORY IN THE UPCOMING MARCH-APRIL ISSUE OF MARKETS MEDIA MAGAZINE