Interviews

Nadejda Rakovska, chief executive of start-up volatility specialist Volvar Asset Management, which is preparing to launch its first fund as a self-managed Luxembourg Sicav SIF, expects volatility to be recognised as a separate asset class that will attract increased allocations from multi-managers and balanced portfolios and prompt more players to launch funds.

Neal Goyal, chief investment officer of Blue Horizon Asset Management, outlines his firm's strategy to capitalise on the volatile market environment and continuing fall-out from the sub-pr

The five-year-old Julius Baer Absolute Return Bond Fund managed by London-based Augustus Asset Managers has delivered euro-denominated returns of 3.8 per cent over the past three

Alistair MacDonald, co-manager of the newly-launched Merrion European Absolute Return Fund, argues that Ucits III hedge funds are benefiting from the current uncertainty over the final form and substance of the European Union’s AIFM Directive as well as concerns over the costs of implementing its requirements.

Frédéric Durr, a principal and fund manager with Shanghai-based Maoming Investment Management, says the firm’s Maoming Fund aims to generate returns while preserving capital through an intense focus on the companies it invests in, with liquidity the key element in risk management.

Mark Martyrossian and Mark Fleming (pictured), partners in Asian equities specialist Tiburon Partners and co-managers of the Tiburon Taipan and Tiburon Taurus funds, believe that the region was unfairly punished last year, underperforming the US and performing in line with much of Europe despite its stronger macro credentials, and that many stocks are trading at dirt-cheap valuations.

Richard Sherwin, partner and head of investment research at Blacksquare Capital, says the newly-launched IFSL Blacksquare Multi-Manager Absolute Return Fund, of which he is portfolio manager, is accessible and affordable to a large majority of investors thanks to a minimum investment of GBP1,000 for its UK retail share class and the absence of a performance fee – a unique characteristic for a multi-manager absolute return fund.

Alternative Advisors’ William Kitchin (pictured), portfolio manager of the Castillon Diversified Fund, a Ucits absolute return fund of funds, says that while the fund is constrained in its selection of underlying managers by the need to match the liquidity it offers to investors, this is not a particular disadvantage in the short term given the current macro economic conditions.

Florian Wagner, founder and head of Qbasis Invest, which specialises in exchange-traded managed futures, says that after achieving returns of 72 and 145 per cent respectively in 2007 and 2008, the firm also proved the effectiveness of its systems by outperforming the CTA sector the following year despite giving back 15 per cent.

Philip Hardy, manager of the Polar Capital UK Absolute Return Fund, says that after a savage bear market in UK equities in 2008 the outlook remains uncertain, and he expects continued h

Afsin Alp, a partner and portfolio manager with Meadowbrook Capital Management, says the Meadowbrook Beta Neutral Fund, which was officially launch

Stockholm-based Rhenman & Partners Asset Management, a niche player focused on healthcare, has just launched Rhenman Healthcare Equity L/S, a g

The founders of MarketPsy Capital have developed a systematic investment strategy that arbitrages sentiment-based stock mispricing by analysing the

Carl Bernadotte, founder of Stockholm-based CB Asset Management, says the four-year-old CB Hedge fund draws on the firm’s existing investment management work and due diligence by selecting stocks from the long-only European Quality Fund, reducing market risk by shorting the MSCI Europe index.

SAM Capital Partners is looking to expand the investor base of its SAM Capital Equity Opportunity Fund, launched in September 2007, on the back of a run of 13 successive months of positive return. Founder and chief investment officer Dietmar Schmitt says the firm’s approach is being validated by the plans of other groups to launch trading funds with short-term investment horizons.

Pedro Noronha, managing partner of Noster Capital, says the firm’s proprietary indicators currently say that the green shoots crowd is too early in pricing a V-shaped recovery into the market, and that credit spreads, which have tightened to levels that are in some instances similar to the top of the market bubble, are set again to widen considerably once new problems with European bank lending start to surface.

Chin Pu Ma and Chien Wang (pictured), partners and chief investment officer and chief operating officer respectively of Amsterdam-based Asian Century Capital, are looking to attract investors with an eight-year track record of successful investment in Asia on behalf of Dutch banks and an investment style that combines macro themes, a disciplined value-orientated approach, in-house research and the flexibility to go either long or short.

Dr Jan Auspurg (pictured), a fund manager within the quant team at Hamburg-based Aquila Capital, says the AC Spectrum Fund, a Luxembourg-domiciled Ucits that generated a return of 9.98 per cent last August amid massive equity market losses, takes into account not only the strengths of trend-following strategies but their weaknesses, such as a tendency to perform less well in sideways-trading markets or in times of sudden trend reversals.

Lucas Turton, chief investment strategist of Windham Capital Management, which offers a range of active strategies to institutional and wealth management investors through separately-managed accounts, says the firm’s rigorous risk management process has enabled it to flourish despite global economic challenges and sustained financial market volatility, quadrupling assets under management to some USD700m this year.

HFT Capital founder chief investment officer and head trader Romy Jardine and head of business development Bob Torkelund (pictured) say that in a difficult market environment where investors are extremely cautious and nervous, highly-performing niche strategies that “dare to be different” are still capable of attracting money from investors seeking non-correlated returns.

José Luis Jiménez, chief executive of March Gestión de Fondos, the investment arm of Spain’s Banca March, says that a combination of macroeconomic analysis and analysis of financial markets, together with the valuation of companies, is the most critical process for the success of the Spanish firm’s investments.

Aleks Kins, chief executive of managed account platform provider AlphaMetrix, says the uncovering of the Bernard Madoff was a key event for the business, because the scandal pointed to the importance of independence, due diligence and checks and balances, and helped AlphaMetrix to take on some USD1bn in customer assets over the following months.

Alex Orus, chief investment officer at Blue Diamond Asset Management, says the Blue Diamond Real Return Strategy is designed to address investors’ twin concerns of inflation and market bubbles and crashes by seeking to maximise real returns and outperform inflation by an average of 5 per cent over a full market cycle in the investor’s designated currency.

Daniel Schweizer, chief executive and chairman of Horizon21 spin-off Active Alpha, says the firm is particularly nimble in executing its long/short equity trading strategy through very liquid large-cap equities and options, enabling the AA Equity Fund to end 2008 in positive territory and helping Active Alpha to differentiate itself from other managers by providing investors with genuinely uncorrelated performance during difficult times.

Eli Kent and Chris Kelley, co-founders and managing partners of hedge fund seeding platform Harvest Fund, an affiliate of Moody Aldrich Partners, expect to see a surge in investment opportunities over the coming year or so as regulatory changes, increased fee compression and shrinking margins at many established investment firms prompt a flood of talent to go independent.

Faris Abdulrazzaq (pictured), senior portfolio manager at Menasa Capital Management, which specialises in identifying investment opportunities in the rapidly-growing public markets of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia, says that with a buoyant oil price driving current account surpluses, Gulf governments are poised to spend more than ever on building infrastructure and creating jobs. 

Ian McEvatt, majority owner of Iceman Capital Advisors, says the London- and Amsterdam-listed Himalayan Fund it manages is narrowly focused on generating returns from opportunities in Indian stocks. Because of this, he says, Iceman concentrates on providing excellent communication and client servicing and a level of transparency and access that cannot be provided within any kind of institutional structure.

Portfolio Science president Ittai Korin (pictured) says the firm’s provision of risk management services through an application programming interface is bringing risk tools to a broader range of investment industry players than ever, at a time when managers are realising that a seat-of-the pants approach to risk management and reporting is no longer adequate for their business needs or acceptable to their own clients.

James Thornton, fund director at Mayfair Capital Investment Management, says investors with the specialist property fund manager have benefited from the firm’s ability to time the UK market – for example in 2007, when they called the peak of the market and decided to wind up the MC Property Growth Fund early to protect investors’ capital and take profits.

Phoenix Investment Adviser, which focuses on investing in the bonds of out-of-favour companies whose securities’ prices have declined substantially, recently opened to outside investors a fund investing in the equity of the same ‘stressed’ companies. Founder and chief investment officer Jeff Peskind says such stocks may have significant upside potential in an environment of economic recovery where companies continue to have access to capital via the high-yield market.

Jonathan Sharpe, chief executive of Ratio Asset Management, says the long/short small and mid-cap equity Ratio European Fund benefits from the limited attention the sell-side pays to the fund’s investment universe, which increases its inefficiencies, while the sharp decline in the level of assets on the buy side from its peak has increased the available opportunities.

Liz Evans, manager of the recently-launched Asia Pacific fund at investment boutique Cavendish Asset Management, says 2010 will be a generally positive year for Asian markets as they continue to recover from last year’s historic trough, with less volatile markets and more moderate returns, but uncertainty remains over prospects for inflation and interest rate rises, especially in China.

Michael Azlen, founder and executive chairman of Frontier Investment Management, says the investment proposition behind the firm’s passive multi-asset funds, encompassing eight asset classes, is based in part on the diversification benefits of combining traditional and alternative asset classes, a philosophy similar to that of US university endowment funds.

Michael Reichstein, whose Maltese alternative fund business, Resco Funds Sicav, is preparing to launch the Thoroughbred Horse Fund, says that despite the risks inherent in an asset class whose performance is partly dependent upon race results, the fund aims to achieve stable and attractive performance through a strategy of diversified investments and the access to the knowledge of a broad range of industry experts.

Olaf van den Heuvel, European head of tactical asset allocation at Aegon Asset Management and portfolio manager of the Ucits-compliant Global Opportunities Fund launched last December, expects the fallout following the credit crunch to continue along with further ‘surprises’ like Greece or Dubai.

Silverstone Capital partner Philip Pirecki says the firm’s eponymous fund, which invests across the automotive industry value chain, can provide investment institutions such as pension funds with the alpha and low correlation they seek to achieve a return profile that will meet their investment objectives.

AIMhedge chief investment officer Richard Bibb says the firm’s combination of a systematic, emotion-free trading approach over a large, well-diversified basket of futures markets and an effective active risk management system is a very powerful argument for investors just starting to look for better-performing investments in the wake of the financial meltdown in 2008.

Ronald M Neumunz, head of sales and investor relations at Geneva-based Alpstar Capital, says the firm’s concentrated focus on Europe is a key differentiator that appeals to non-European investors who want dedicated continental credit exposure, along with an investment process combining macro and micro elements with a real operating world overlay.

Thanos Ballos, managing partner of Strategic Investments Group, says the firm’s multi-manager Active Trading Fund, launched in May this year and managed by Permal Group, offers a multi-asset strategy that seeks to generate absolute returns with controlled volatility and low correlation to the fixed-income and equity markets.

Coburn Barrett founder and senior manager Thomas Wehlen says the firm’s GLI Fund, a global quantitative macro fund, has beaten both the S&P 500 and the MSCI Global indices by more than 10 per cent over its nearly 13 years of existence, but fundraising is difficult because the fund does not fit into any standard category and not charge a performance fee.

Tony Parry, executive director of Premier Group (Isle of Man), says the New Earth Solutions Recycling Facilities Investment Sub-Fund, launched in partnership with environmental technology specialist New Earth Solutions, has returned 25.8 per cent since July 2008 by investing directly and indirectly in the development and ownership of recycling facilities in the UK.

Rupert Foster (pictured), manager of the Matrix Asia Fund, believes that this year will see the start of global tightening, in the short term causing markets to become nervous and jittery but subsequently opening up opportunities first in interest rate-sensitive and then cyclical areas of the market.

Robert Milroy, chief investment officer of fund of hedge funds manager Corazon Capital, says that having cut its ties to the fallen Dawnay Day grou

Chief executive Dr Glenn Baggley says Eddington Capital Management aims to offer investors a high-octane fund of funds portfolio through the selection of talented managers capable of achie

David Sheasby, a member of the management team for the Martin Currie Omnium Fund, believes the fund of funds, which invests in the firm's range of

Stephen Greene, partner and chief investment officer of the multi-manager business at ACP Partners, says that having undergone an unprecedented sho

Benchmark Plus chief executive Robert Ferguson says the USD1.7bn fund of hedge funds manager says the firm’s unique investment process analyses alpha streams rather than returns, allowing for an equal comparison of all strategies and enabling the firm to allocate to funds and managers that have demonstrated skill at exploiting specific market inefficiencies and generating returns in excess of their portfolios’ specific risk exposures.

Tai Tam Capital'sHui-Wen Shiau (see attached photo) and Jun-Tsiang Lam outline the
thinking that is driving the investment strategy of their new As

Simon Luhr, chief executive of PCE Investors (pictured), and Gyldmark chief investment officer Mahmood Noorani, explain the approach of the Gyldmark global macro fund launched in July and that is currently targeting the overall level of demand and supply for risky assets.

Luca Rubinelli, portfolio manager of the Global Macro Absolute Return Trading strategy at systematic trading specialist Xenfin Capital, says uncertainty over G10 government balance sheets and weake

Mick Swift, director of research at Dublin-based Abbey Capital, says the firm, which runs global macro and managed futures multi-manager funds with more than USD1.7bn under management, is enjoying strong allocations from investors thanks to the high levels of liquidity offered by the funds as well as the firm’s eight-year track record.

Nicolas Galperin, founder of Onslow Capital Management and principal portfolio manager of the Onslow Macro Fund, says the firm’s ‘option-like’ strategy and portfolio structure puts less emphasis on market direction and more on delivering the right risk-return relationship across a range of idiosyncratic themes.

Dr Paul Netherwood, a partner with managed futures specialist Beach Horizon, says the strategy is set to increase its appeal not only because of it

Aref Karim, principal of Quality Capital Management, which has just launched its 14-year-old managed futures strategy through an onshore Ucits III fund vehicle, says CTAs stand to benef

SVM Asset Management managing director Colin McLean says the SVM Highlander Fund he manages, which has returned an annualised 15.1 per cent since i

Brian Gilmore, chief executive of Palatine Asset Management, says the Capitoline Global Media Fund, which aims to exploit capital inefficiencies in the market for asset-based financing

Head of funds Manfred Schrapler says that as one of the few banks with a dedicated hybrid structuring and trading team, Deutsche Bank is able to use unique risk management techniques to

Michael Derks, chief investment officer of Arch Financial Products, says the CF Arch cru Finance Fund launched in November to invest in short- to medium-term private finance deals enjoy

Andreas Koettner, managing director and head of portfolio management at Malta-based Golden Hedge Alternative Investments, says the firm’s multistrategy fund stands to benefit from its specialisation in relatively unusual niche strategies that display low correlation to typical CTA or hedge fund styles.

Justin O’Connor (pictured), chief executive and chief investment officer of property fund manager Cordea Savills, says that new opportunities with the potential to deliver outperformance over the longer term exist in the Nordic region, where secure property market fundamentals have prompted the reopening of the Nordic Retail Fund, and London residential development, where a new fund aims to benefit from the current shortage in capital funding by negotiating favourable terms with developers.

Direct investment in farmland has outperformed stock and bond returns over various timescales with substantially lower volatility than the US equit

Marc Thiel, chief executive of real estate investor and manager Euro Ejendomme, says the firm’s new hotel fund, which is aiming to close with EUR500m in capital by next June, aims to capitalise upon the relative lack in Germany of the middle-range business hotels common in the UK and France.

Manuel Alejandro Dopazo, managing director of London-based investment manager and corporate advisor Fincere, says that despite the recent impact on emerging markets of global financial turbulence, the world's developing economies are well placed to continue to build on their growth of the past few years.

Peter Halloran, founder and chief executive of specialist Russia and CIS manager Pharos Financial Group, says the firm's presence in Russia and its network of local contacts are the key to

Todd Voigt, manager of Cohen & Steers' Global Real Estate Long-Short strategy, which differentiates itself through bottom-up fundamental resear

Carlo Scevola, president of Carlo Scevola & Partners, which is portfolio manager to the Leader Fund, says his firm's model-driven process for i

Julie Bouhuys, founder and chief executive of Concerto Asset Management, says that although the Concerto Credit Opportunity Offshore Fund I benefit

Majedie Asset Management'sTortoise Fund returned 12.1 per cent in 2008 and was up more than 25 per cent in the first half of this year despite a co

President Stephen Siderow says credit investment specialist BlueMountain Capital Management is planning to launch a series of funds this year to ex

Sergey Grechishkin, a principal with Alcantara Asset Management, says the firm’s newly-launched Alcantara Russia and CIS Fixed Income Opportunities Fund, which follows a mix of active long-only and relative value strategies, draws heavily on its founders close understanding and experience of fixed-income issuers in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Steven Gerbel, founder and president of merger arbitrage specialist Chicago Capital Management, expects a historic number of mergers within the US banking industry over the coming years as a result of the crisis highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of institutions, and believes this will present the sector with some of the largest merger arbitrage spreads and profit margins ever seen.