Although Robert W. Baird and Co.'s origins date to 1919, its Milwaukee-based asset-management business has over the past 25 years grown into an industry stalwart through deft talent acquisition. In early 2000, Mary Ellen Stanek and her team joined to form the fixed-income-focused Baird Advisors. With modest fees and an effective, benchmark-aware approach, its taxable bond team now runs the lion's share of Baird's assets under management. The firm bolstered its municipal bond expertise in mid-2015 and in August 2019, and that part of the business now has considerable promise, too.
Although not as big or extensive in its lineup as its fixed-income counterpart, Baird Equity Asset Management has also opportunistically added key personnel. It purchased the international and global growth equity team of Chautauqua Capital Management in 2016 and in late 2021 strengthened ties with proven investor Joseph Milano, formerly of T. Rowe Price, while removing a small-value team that had struggled over the prior decade.
Succession bears monitoring. Indeed, Stanek and her co-CIO Warren Pierson are part of Baird Advisors' founding generation whose members each have nearly 40 if not more years of experience. That's offset, however, by a collaborative, team-based approach that should leave investors in good hands well after that generation's retirement.