Interviews

Merchant Capital directors Chris Day (pictured) and George Cadbury say the firm, which last year launched the first Dublin-domiciled Ucits umbrella fund created specifically for Ucits absolute return funds, is looking to launch up to 10 funds over the course of 2010 following the debut of the long/short Merchant European Equity Fund in January.

Manager Richard Hodgetts says the newly-launched Collins Stewart Alternative Strategies Fund, a Ucits III fund of absolute return funds that draws on the firm’s extensive experience as a manager of funds of hedge funds, is set to capitalise on increasing interest in absolute return strategies as investor confidence returns.

Spike Hughes, chief executive of Insynergy Investment Management, says that building on the existing success of its initial retail fund run by Crispin Odey and new absolute return funds targeting India and China, the firm will seek out further world-class investment teams with proven strategies that can be adapted to a Ucits structure.

Willem de Vlugt and Charles Estourgie, founding partners and fund managers at Amsterdam-based EValuation Capital Management, says the EV Smaller Companies Fund they manage is set to benefit from a favourable environment in the coming year as its core long portfolio of small and medium-sized companies emerge stronger from the crisis.

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.

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.

Anthony Eaton, manager of the six-year-old, GBP54m JM Finn Global Opportunities Fund, says the fund aims to invest in the consequences of globalisation as industrialisation and urbanisation within non-G7 countries create greater global output but also greater capacity, moving pricing power from what is made to what is required to make it.

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.

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.

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.

Michael Azlen, founder and executive chairman of Frontier Capital Management, says his firm’s index-based approach to multi-asset investing is modelled on the tried and tested approach of US university endowments, aims to create a globally diversified portfolio through exposure to eight traditional and alternative asset classes or strategies to generate long-term uncorrelated real returns above inflation and cash.

Nicolas Clavel, founder and chief investment officer of Africa-focused asset manager Scipion Capital, says the firm’s flagship Commodity Trade Finance fund, which has produced positive performance every month since its launch in 2007, is now seeking out lucrative opportunities to provide short-term finance in the minerals field, such as copper in Zambia and tin in Rwanda.

Paul Brosnan, marketing director of IFS Asset Managers and a director of the newly-launched International Forestry Fund, says rising timber prices in the jurisdictions in which the fund owns portfolios is not only good news for investors but will help raise awareness of forestry as an attractive, secure and predictable asset class for those interested in socially responsible investment.

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.

SEAL Capital founders and managing partners R Michael Reveley (pictured) and Toby Chandler believe that in the wake of the Madoff, Galleon and K1 scandals, investors are demanding transparency, liquidity and a highly ethical infrastructure, which their firm delivers through the HFR managed account platform.

Aros Capital Partners has just launched its first investment vehicle, the long-biased global macro Aros Paradigm Fund, with friends and family capital. Chief investment officer and founding partner Nicolai Borcher Hansen (pictured) says the fund’s investment strategy will target value-based investment in equities and corporate bonds as well as exploiting the firm’s expertise in the niche area of Danish mortgage bonds.

Renee Haugerud (pictured), founder and chief investment officer of global macro manager Galtere, sees opportunities in the convergence of the US economy with commodity-rich economies and is backing that view through a real assets private equity strategy that invests in the production of agricultural staples in Brazil, Uruguay and Australia as well as complementary agribusiness opportunities in Brazil.

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.