William Blair Investment Management Launches Global Leaders Select Strategy, Appoints Chandan Khanna as Co-Portfolio Manager

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--William Blair Investment Management today announced the launch of the Global Leaders Select Strategy, with the appointment of Chandan Khanna as Co-Portfolio Manager alongside Hugo Scott-Gall, Head of William Blair’s Global Equity Team.

The Global Leaders Select strategy is a concentrated portfolio of 25-35 leading global companies which combine quality and growth characteristics. The strategy is benchmark-agnostic and aims to deliver strong long-term returns for investors through conviction, concentration, and compounding.

Global Leaders Select combines William Blair’s established global equities capabilities with an investment approach that Khanna has applied since 2021. The strategy’s focus on a concentrated portfolio of high-quality global companies with durable growth closely reflects the philosophy and portfolio-construction approach Khanna employed before joining William Blair. While Global Leaders Select is a newly launched strategy, Khanna brings a five-year track record of delivering strong performance with the strategy.

Khanna will work alongside Hugo Scott-Gall and William Blair’s global equity team to manage the strategy, drawing on the firm’s deep fundamental research capabilities and long-standing experience in quality investing. Global Leaders Select is part of William Blair’s Leaders platform, a series of actively managed equity portfolios focused on high-quality companies with strong competitive advantages, pricing power, and earnings growth. This includes William Blair’s Emerging Market Leaders, International Leaders and Global Leaders strategies.

Khanna brings more than 15 years of experience as a public equity investor, with a strong track record in high conviction strategies. Most recently, he served as Senior Partner and Portfolio Manager at Eighteen48 Partners, managing the Sixteen02 Global Equity Fund. Prior to this, he was the Lead Global Equity Portfolio Manager at Rezayat Investments and held roles at Capital Group and Morgan Stanley, having started his career at KPMG.

William Blair Investment Management’s Global Leaders Select Strategy has been seeded with $225 million in a separately managed account.

Chandan Khanna, Portfolio Manager, William Blair Investment Management, said: “I’m excited to build William Blair’s Global Leaders Select strategy alongside a team that shares my passion for investing where growth can truly compound over time. William Blair has a long history of combining deep fundamental research with a forward-looking, global mindset aligning with this strategy’s focus on identifying best-in-class or emerging best-in-class companies which offer attractive growth and underappreciated earnings power. I look forward to continuing delivering for the firm’s clients.”

“Chandan’s global perspective, disciplined investment approach, and his wealth of experience in fundamental bottom-up investing make him a natural addition to our team. His appointment and the launch of Global Leaders Select reinforces our commitment to delivering active, research-driven strategies that uncover opportunities across global markets,” said Hugo Scott-Gall, Partner, Portfolio Manager, and Head of William Blair’s Global Equity Team.

About William Blair Investment Management

William Blair Investment Management is a premier global investment management partnership, with a sole focus on active management across U.S. growth and core equities; U.S. value equities; global equities, including emerging markets equities; and emerging markets debt strategies. We work closely with private and public pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as financial advisors.

About William Blair

William Blair is the premier global partnership with expertise in investment banking, investment management, and private wealth management. We provide advisory services, strategies, and solutions to meet our clients’ evolving needs. As an independent and employee-owned firm, together with our strategic partners, we operate in more than 30 offices worldwide. See: https://www.williamblair.com/

*Includes strategic alliances with Allier Capital, BDA Partners, and Poalim Equity Ltd.