Still, it has not outgrown its Average Parent rating as these new additions require time to settle and as success remains concentrated in certain mandates.
John Calamos Sr. founded his namesake firm in 1977, and it quickly gained a reputation for convertible bond expertise. The firm was temporarily publicly traded, but after about 12 years, it pivoted back to private ownership in January 2017, within a year of John Koudounis taking over as CEO. Since then, Calamos gained a new CFO and head of fixed income (both in 2016), COO and head of product (both in 2021), chief marketing officer (2022), and head of ETFs (2023). While leadership and succession planning have solidified since Koudounis took over (and so have the senior investment personnel as the firm’s long-term incentive program evolved), broader stability requires time to crystallize.
As of mid-2023, the firm’s long-established liquid alternatives offerings still drove the greatest proportion of flows and held the bulk of assets—Market Neutral Income (a core substrategy of which is convertible arbitrage) accounts for nearly 40% of the firm’s USD 35.6 billion in assets. New ventures—such as the launch of sustainable equities strategies and a partnership with Aksia on a closed-end private credit interval fund—are reasonable pursuits, but still very fresh.