Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
This is Chris Redgrave for Zions Bank Speaking on Business.
Can you imagine starting in an industry at the age of 16 and still being there 30 years later? That's what happened for Robert Gardiner and Eric Huefner. These friends and business partners grew up as neighbors and worked their first few jobs — a paper route and stocking at the local grocery store — together. Until the owner of a prominent Salt Lake City investing firm saw these hard-working kids and wanted to give them something better.
They started doing operational work for his investment firm and both found their true calling. Robert became a senior partner who was so talented you could often find him listed in the Wall Street Journal. Just last summer he and Eric took their experience and launched Grandeur Peak Global Advisors in Salt Lake City with their third business partner, Blake Walker.
This company operates two mutual funds, the Grandeur Peak Global Opportunities Fund and the Grandeur Peak International Opportunities Fund. It's one of only a few mutual funds to focus on investing in small-cap and micro-cap companies around the world. Their strategy is pretty straightforward: look for "undiscovered growth companies" or businesses with a competitive advantage in their industries, a strong management team and steady annual revenue growth.
Grandeur Peak's global fund has over 200 holdings, so they have a wide range of investments across sectors and in over 30 countries. These guys have also made strategic visits all over the world to connect with businesses. Some of the companies they're investing in include Cardica which makes the newest technology staple guns for minimally invasive and robot-assisted surgeries or Koh Young in Korea, Test Research in Taiwan and Viscom in Germany which produce inspection equipment for quality control.
Just in case you're thinking investments are not something for you, Grandeur Peak Global Advisors is set up so anybody can invest in their mutual funds, even kids. Adults can start with $2,000 and kids with $100. The risk with this type of investment tends to be less than for individual stocks since it's so diversified.
For Zions Bank, I'm Chris Redgrave, speaking on business.
Grandeur Peak Global Advisors 136 S. Main St., Ste. 720 Salt Lake City, UT 84101 1-855-377-7325 www.grandeurpeakglobal.com
