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A Montreal-based asset management firm is replacing the U.S. portfolio adviser for one of its funds with an in-house team, a move it says will better serve Canadian clients. The relationship dates back nearly 25 years.

Pembroke Management Ltd. (Pembroke Management) said it’s replacing Chicago-based William Blair Investment Management LLC as the portfolio adviser for the Pembroke International Growth Fund. The in-house team taking the charge on investment decisions for the fund will be led by portfolio managers Derrick Gut, a native Montrealer, and Andrew Garschagen, an American who’s been living in Montreal for several years.

The change will take effect on or about May 1. The fund’s Class F units were ceased March 24.

Gut, who was recently hired along with two analysts to guide Pembroke Management’s global investing strategies, said the U.S. adviser relationship was inefficient.

“Outsourcing the management and asking questions to the investment team [in the U.S.], there was a bit of a lag in it, a quarterly lag,” he said.

Nicolas Chevalier, managing partner with Pembroke Management, said the firm also believes it can do “as good a job, if not better than William Blair has over the last couple of years” at generating returns.

“Even though William Blair is a great firm, they struggled a little bit from a returns perspective,” said Chevalier, who is also president and CEO of Pembroke Private Wealth Management Ltd. “They’ve managed money for us for 25 years, and like any other manager, there’s some good and bad periods — a manager cannot be good every single year.”

The Ottawa-Washington trade war was also a factor in the decision.

“Bringing money from the U.S. back to Canada in these days is probably a good thing,” Chevalier said. “It’s not the only factor, but it’s something that we feel our unitholders and our clients are sensitive to.”

The fund will still aim to provide long-term capital appreciation by investing primarily in a diversified portfolio of foreign companies — located outside the U.S. and Canada — across all market capitalization ranges, Gut said.

His team is eyeing investment opportunities in Europe, the U.K. and Japan.

“The U.S. had all the glory … since the Great Financial Crisis, and it very much feels like there is a tide turning,” Gut said. “We relish the market volatility. It creates opportunities for us.”