Hedge Fund Research has signed a deal under which Mercer IC and its clients will have access to extensive data on single strategy transparent hedge funds.

Joseph G. Nicholas, founder and chairman of Chicago-based HFR, said: "Mercer Investment Consulting's leading presence in institutional investment consulting, both in the US and globally, makes this alignment attractive to HFR. This will help us expand our approach to transparent hedge fund investing among pension plan sponsors, foundations, and endowments."

HFR's extensive proprietary database includes information on more than 5,500 funds. A team of 11 HFR researchers performs formal qualitative due diligence on several hundred of these funds.

Mercer Investment Consulting is a leading global provider of investment consulting services, and offers customized guidance at every stage of the investment decision, risk management, and investment monitoring process. Mercer IC works with the fiduciaries of pension funds, foundations, endowments, and other investors in some 35 countries.
 
Tim Gardener, global business leader for Mercer IC, said: "Given the more onerous due diligence requirements of researching individual hedge funds, our agreement with HFR will help us identify opportunities more quickly based on a combination of our proprietary research complemented by HFR's analysis, which includes position-level transparency and daily risk management on a large number of individual hedge funds. Access to HFR's research is a good complement to the in-house efforts of our own 44 full-time manager researchers."

Divyesh Hindocha, global director of consulting for Mercer IC, added: "The trend towards increased investment by our clients in single-strategy hedge funds is a function of their desire to capture returns from active management. They also recognize the difficulty of capturing value added through traditional long-only investment management. Leading hedge fund managers are exhibiting greater willingness to accept guidelines aimed at ensuring appropriate transparency and risk control. Gaining access to HFR's research will substantially enhance our ability to meet our clients' needs."