Gabelli Asset Managers Melody Prenner Bryant and Christina Alfandary Pick ESG Winners for their Portfolio

November 7, 2019

   

Melody Prenner Bryant joined Gabelli Asset Management Company in 2018 as a Portfolio Manager and recently also joined the portfolio management team of the Gabelli ESG Fund in February 2019.

Ms. Bryant has almost 30 years of experience as a Portfolio Manager, having begun her career as a security analyst for Oppenheimer Capital Corp. She then joined John A. Levin & Co., Inc. as a security analyst and subsequently became a portfolio manager, Co-Chairman and a member of the board of directors of BKF Capital, a holding company for the asset management firm.  She lives with her husband and five children in New York City.

Christina Alfandary rejoined Gabelli Asset Management Company in 2016 as Managing Director, Environmental, Social & Governance — ESG — and Sustainable Investments.

In her role, she leads the company’s expansion of its ESG integration efforts and ESG investing capabilities. Prior to rejoining, she was Senior Managing Director, Co-Head of Nikko Asset Management Americas, Inc. where she worked from 2005 to 2015.

A native of California, Ms. Alfandary received an MBA in finance from Columbia Business School and earned her B.A. from Lewis & Clark College.

In this 2,802 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript, these two top portfolio managers reveal a unique investment vision with specific examples.

“A second name is Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG), the parent company of Google. And here we have done a considerable amount of work, particularly because there are ESG concerns regarding cybersecurity and privacy issues that have come to the front.

But we feel very confident after speaking to the management many times on these topics that they’re ring-fencing the business and they’re doing their best to comply with all requirements that the government is demanding. Their cybersecurity is extremely robust.

What’s interesting to us isn’t so much the plain-vanilla Google business, the search business, but rather the business that’s called “Other Bets.”

The Other Bets are a group of companies that Alphabet has invested in over time. And these collectively are losing money at the moment, but many of them represent really significant value and opportunity.”

Get the complete picture on this and several other top picks in this 2,802 word interview, exclusive to the Wall Street Transcript.