American company Putnam Investments is setting up shop in Canada through a partnership with Sceptre Investment Counsel, which has offices in Vancouver and Toronto. The duo has launched eight new Putnam-branded mutual funds that are available to retail investors through the financial advisory and broker channel.

According to Putnam’s COO of International Business, Jeff Peters, Boston-based Putnam chose the Canadian market for several reasons including an attractive market with a history of growing quickly and robustly.

“It also has a distribution model that’s very similar to how Putnam does business in the United States. Plus a sophisticated investor model that values the products that Putnam and Sceptre can bring, it’s an attractive market place as a whole,” he says.

Both firms agree that the partnership between them is ideal, in fact the last year brought success to the institutional business that the two have been working jointly on. The two firms thought the time was right to attack the retail market, says Peters.

“Part of the advantage that we bring to the market with Putnam is the fact that this is a leveraged model. We’ve set up a Canadian unit and we’ve been down there educating and running sessions on regulatory environment. Even though we are a start up here in Canada we’re able to leverage the overall size of Putnam,” says Rocco Taglioni, managing director at Sceptre.

Of the eight new mutual funds, four will invest in U.S. and international securities and will be managed through by a Putnam team. The remaining four funds, managed by a Sceptre team, will be based on existing U.S.funds but will invest in Canadian securities.

The funds are: Putnam U.S. Value Fund; Putnam U.S. Voyager Fund; Putnam International Equity Fund; Putnam Global Equity Fund; Putnam Canadian Equity Fund; Putnam Canadian Balanced Fund; Putnam Canadian Bond Fund; and Putnam Canadian Money Market Fund

“The funds offer the investor a broad platform to meet all of their needs, both Canadian investing and overseas. Putnam has a 500 person investment capability and deep fundamental and quantitative research capabilities that track the stocks that the equity funds invest in,” says Peters.

Plans to launch future funds are undefined as of yet, say both firms. “We think this platform offers a broad product sweep for investors right now so we’re sticking with what we’ve got for the time being,” says Peters.

More information is posted on the Web sites of the two firms, www.sceptre.ca and www.putnaminvestments.com.