A legacy can be carried forward without denying the failures that became part of its history.
A serious failure can be part of a history without becoming the whole history.
This is the most personal part of PoMaTo's story.
PoMaTo was built in part from professional experience shaped at AXA Rosenberg, and from a belief that an important industrial contribution should be remembered alongside the regulatory failures that later became part of its history.
The coding error existed.
It mattered.
The regulatory record is serious and should not be softened.
But a serious failure should not erase an earlier industrial contribution.
Barr Rosenberg helped demonstrate that investment management could be approached as an integrated, quantitative system.
Technology, research, portfolio construction, risk and implementation could be designed to work together rather than as isolated activities.
That contribution deserves to be remembered alongside the failure, not replaced by it.
The public record matters.
In 2011, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission found that a material coding error had affected a key risk component of the quantitative investment model, that disclosure and correction were delayed, and that clients suffered losses. The AXA Rosenberg entities settled related charges, agreed to compensate harmed clients and paid a penalty.
Later that year, the SEC entered a separate settled order against Barr Rosenberg concerning his conduct in relation to the error.
I am not asking anyone to ignore that record.
I am arguing that the record should not become the entire account of what came before it.
PoMaTo is not claiming to be AXA Rosenberg reborn.
We are not copying proprietary models.
We are not trading on nostalgia.
We are not excusing mistakes.
We are carrying forward a principle that shaped my own professional experience:
Build the investment process as a system. Use technology to remove avoidable labour. Use human intelligence where judgement is genuinely required. Place the owner of the capital above the machinery administering it.
That is the legacy we intend to carry forward.
And yes, I believe Barr Rosenberg's professional legacy deserves a fuller account of both what he contributed and what later went wrong.
Not by denying the failure.
By refusing to let the failure become the only thing remembered.
I am putting my own professional reputation behind that judgement.
Not because Barr needs a disciple. Not because PoMaTo needs a legend. Because an idea should be judged on what it achieved, what failed, and whether the useful principle can survive both.
This is not about memorialising a founder - Barr or me. A philosophy earns its place only if it continues to work.
The possibility demonstrated by systematic investment management did not belong only to its creators.
It should ultimately benefit the saver, who should be able to access professional investment capability without financing avoidable complexity around it.
Technology should continuously reduce avoidable operating cost.
Transparency should continuously reduce unnecessary intermediation.
Automation should continuously eliminate work that does not create value.
Human talent should be rewarded for insight, accountability and results - not for maintaining avoidable complexity.
PoMaTo is not asking the industry for permission to continue that philosophy. We are building around it.
Barr Rosenberg helped show what systematic investment management could make possible.
Our responsibility is to prove that the underlying principle still works.
Not for Barr.
Not for us.
For the people whose money sustains this industry and who should receive more of the benefit when technology makes investment management more efficient.
Pay the right fee.
Reward real skill.
Fund genuine value.
Starve waste.
Stop feeding the machine.
Fabio Agostini
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
PoMaTo