Arbroath Group
Geopolitics & Macroeconomics
Strategy & Insight
Arbroath Group
Geopolitics & Macroeconomics
Strategy & Insight
Focused Analysis - Actionable Advice
Shifting Global Order
Opportunity in Volatility
Shifting Global Order
With extensive experience in global politics, economics and financial markets, we deliver insights that are focused, concrete and actionable.
Signal in the Noise
Opportunity in Volatility
Shifting Global Order
We track macroeconomic and geopolitical dynamics to develop critically relevant recommendations that target top client priorities.
Opportunity in Volatility
Opportunity in Volatility
Opportunity in Volatility
Amid generational upheaval, we continuously assess where current market opportunities may fail and current market failures offer opportunity.
Arbroath Group Expertise
Geopolitcal Strategy
We advise multinationals and investment clients on how best to navigate rising global political and economic tensions. Drawing on broad expert networks, we offer concrete advice on corporate and portfolio strategies that exploit opportunities and mitigate risks. Recent engagements include helping global firms manage new trade barriers with China, advising investors on tightening Russia sanctions and assessing threats to supply chains from escalating Middle East conflict. In each instance, we provide tailored advice that helps frame strategic decisions amid growing uncertainty.
Macroeconomics & Markets
Managing Partner Christopher Smart brings extensive expertise drawn from both top quintile portfolio management experience as well as senior policymaking roles at the U.S. Treasury and White House. This nuanced understanding of geopolitics and markets offers clients a rare perspective on the current outlook. This rich mix of demonstrated investment expertise alongside policymaking leadership at the highest levels delivers uniquely actionable, high-trust advice for Arbroath clients.
Megatrends
We explore the trends that will determine profits and losses over the long term, asking questions corporate executives and investors a decade from now will wish they had understood today. Will demographic change bring more headwinds than tailwinds to growth? Can technological innovation create jobs faster than it destroys them? Where will the climate transition disrupting markets most? Track our latest views on political, economic and market developments by subscribing to Leading Thoughts on Substack.
Christopher W. Smart
Managing Partner
Christopher W. Smart is the founder and managing partner of the Arbroath Group. His distinguished career in global financial markets and government service helps drive the Group’s work to distill high-value macroeconomic and geopolitical insights, advice and strategy.
Christopher is an accomplished investor, with demonstrated success
Christopher W. Smart is the founder and managing partner of the Arbroath Group. His distinguished career in global financial markets and government service helps drive the Group’s work to distill high-value macroeconomic and geopolitical insights, advice and strategy.
Christopher is an accomplished investor, with demonstrated success in portfolio management and investment strategy, complemented by senior economic policy roles at the U.S. Treasury and the White House.
Prior to founding the Arbroath Group, Christopher was the Chief Global Strategist at Barings, where he also founded, built and led the Barings Investment Institute. The Institute focused on the investment opportunities shaped by macroeconomic and political dynamics and explored the forces driving long-term capital allocation decisions.
From 2013 to 2015, he served in the White House as Special Assistant to the President at the National Economic Council and the National Security Council, where he was principal advisor on trade, investment and global economic issues. Christopher also spent four years as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, where he led the response to the European financial crisis and led U.S. engagement on financial policy across Europe, Russia and Central Asia.
Christopher has also served as a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and at the Chatham House Royal Institute of International Affairs where he explored issues at the intersection of financial markets, international relations and national security.
Prior to his government service, he worked as the Director of International Investments at Pioneer Investments where he managed top-performing Emerging Markets and International portfolios.
Early in his career, he was an advisor to the Russian Finance Ministry following the collapse of the Soviet Union and a journalist in Florida and France.
Christopher's public profile includes regular columns on global markets and international relations that he writes for Barron’s, Bloomberg Opinion and Foreign Policy, and he is also a frequent guest on CNBC, Bloomberg News and other major media.
Christopher holds a B.A. in History from Yale University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University. Fluent in French and Russian, he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
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Arbroath Group
Declaration of Arbroath
Strategic investment advice must be thoughtful, informed and above all independent. We take our name from the Declaration of Arbroath, signed by Scottish barons in this coastal town northeast of Edinburgh in 1320 to declare independence from England.