Royce to Give Up Remaining Portfolio Management Duties

Small-cap investing legend Chuck Royce will relinquish his remaining daily portfolio management duties by the end of September 2024 and become a senior advisor to the firm he founded more than 50 years ago, completing a nearly decadelong leadership handoff.

Royce, who started Royce Investment Partners in 1972 after buying the management company that had been running what was then named Pennsylvania Mutual Fund, has been sloughing off responsibilities slowly over the years. The fund family built around Royce, his small-cap stock expertise, and personality as a dapper, bow-tie-wearing gentleman value investor has added people and structures over the years to preserve its approach and culture.

Royce handed off operational duties beginning with the naming of Chris Clark and Francis Gannon as co-chief investment officers in 2014. Clark also became CEO in 2016. The firm also now has management and risk committees and has bolstered its investment teams with promotions and new hires. Clark said the firm has hired 15 investment professionals in the past five years.

As the family has added to its ranks, Royce has stepped back from his lead manager roles, too. For instance, Royce Small-Cap PENNX, which used to be Royce Pennsylvania Mutual, has gradually morphed into a multimanager offering. Meanwhile, firm veterans Steve McBoyle and Lauren Romeo have taken over Royce Premier RYPRX, and relative newcomer Miles Lewis has been running Royce Small-Cap Total Return RYTRX. The firm telegraphed each of the phases of Royce’s succession as it rolled them out. The culmination of the plan doesn’t change any of those strategies’ People or Process ratings.

Royce, who turns 85 this year, will officially step off Premier and Small-Cap Total Return on July 31, 2024. At the same time, analyst and assistant manager Joe Hintz will become a comanager, and analyst Jag Sriram will become an assistant manager on the latter fund. Lewis hired Hintz from their former firm American Century, shortly after Royce lured Lewis to Royce Investment Partners in 2020; Sriram has been a well-regarded analyst at the firm since 2020. These moves will not affect the People and Process ratings of Premier and Small-Cap Total Return.

Royce will remain on Royce Small-Cap until Sept. 30, when Gannon will join the fund and take up Royce’s main role of allocating assets to its independent managers, but he will not pick stocks for the fund. Jim Stoeffel, who managed a small micro-cap sleeve on that fund, will step off that strategy because the other five managers’ fund portions include sufficient exposure to that asset class, the firm said. At the end of September, Royce, who has no immediate plans to retire, will also retreat from Royce Dividend Value RDVIX and closed-end funds Royce Small-Cap Trust RVT, Royce Micro-Cap Trust RMT, and Royce Global Trust RGT.