Ms. Dater: AG Asset Management is an investment boutique focused on the management of equity portfolios. We pride ourselves on our fundamental research, bottom-up stock picking and attention to risk management. We have 24 investment professionals covering all sectors of the economy. We manage growth equity portfolios, from small through multi- to large cap, both small and mid-cap core equity and several other portfolios that we call convergence strategies. These include a series of 130/30 products as well as a service for managing the distributions that are made by venture capital and other private equity partnerships. AG Asset Management is the relatively new name for the firm that was known as ForstmannLeff. It is essentially the growth equity team which originated at that firm in the late 1980s combined with a small cap growth team that began working together at Warburg Pincus Asset Management and a core equity team that was previously affiliated with Wertheim Schroder. We changed the name earlier this year to reflect our affiliation with Angelo, Gordon and Co. to AG Asset Management. Our affiliation with Angelo, Gordon came about as a result of our desire to affiliate with a firm where we could work together to better position for and ultimately capitalize on the convergence that is taking place between the absolute and relative return disciplines. This has indeed been a very successful alliance to date. We closed the transaction a year ago in May (it was announced the prior January) and subsequently have gone on to develop our businesses. The name change took place in April of this year. ForstmannLeff seemed to have had its own history and its own series of glitches from the time that it was sold to Refco and that firm in turn was sold to Thomas Lee. The professionals at ForstmannLeff were sort of looking for their future identity; Mr. Forstmann was no longer with the company and Mr. Leff, unfortunately, had passed away. John Angelo and Michael Gordon entered the picture at an opportune time. As I said, it's ended up being an extremely happy alliance in that we share a number of common goals within our culture. There are three really outstanding things to keep in mind. Both of the firms have a very, very strong commitment to fundamental research. We're all basically analysts of companies in whatever discipline we're engaged. Secondly, we have a very collaborative team approach. Thirdly, we both have a strong commitment and process for risk management. It's really fundamental research, team collaboration, and risk management. In addition to that, I would say that we're passionate about building a great business. So far we've been able to really attract and maintain our best people through this transition and we feel very, very satisfied with that. I hope that it wasn't too longwinded, but that's a brief history of how AG Asset Management came to be. I would say that during this transition, one fact that we are extremely delighted about is that the investment performance across our entire product line at AG Asset Management has been really, really excellent. During this transition, the investment talent of this organization and the results of that talent have definitely been transformed into the numbers that we've been able to report including through this summer, which was, at least in the history of my career, a rather tumultuous time.
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

