London-based hedge fund advisor Fortune Group has entered into strategic partnership agreements with three new single-manager hedge funds run by Acero Capital Management, William Jedwab an
London-based hedge fund advisor Fortune Group has entered into strategic partnership agreements with three new single-manager hedge funds run by Acero Capital Management, William Jedwab and Tim Guinness.
‘Our mission is to find managers of the highest calibre to invest with within our multi-manager portfolios, and to offer these managers to clients who invest directly into single strategy hedge funds,’ says Fortune chief executive Simon Hopkins.
‘We have brought some of the world’s leading hedge fund managers to the market over the past decade. Our current partners have the potential to uphold this record as each is run by investment professionals of the highest credentials, who offer the prospect of strong returns to investors.’
Acero TMT is managed by New York-based Acero, run by John Santo Domingo and Thomas Vincent, a former top-ranked technology team from Citibank Salomon Smith Barney (Santo Domingo was also previously a portfolio manager at Loomis Sayles). According to Fortune, the fund’s performance, including the team’s managed account using the same strategy, has been 56.6 per cent net and 89.3 per cent net over the 35 months to the end of April.
Volatility has been relatively low with an annualised standard deviation of 5.1 per cent, producing a Sharpe Ratio for the strategy at 2.5. In fact, Fortune says, most of the volatility has been on the upside; since inception of the strategy, 80 per cent of months have had positive performance, compared with 71 per cent for the S&P 500. The fund scores a 6.50 Sortino Ratio, which excludes upside volatility from the analysis.
The Richo Offshore Hedge Fund, a Brazilian macro fund, is managed by William Jedwab, a senior trader who previously worked for Bank Safra and Louis Dreyfus. The Richo Fund invests in a range of Brazilian instruments including equities, fixed income and currency, initially applying in-depth macro analysis and a top-down approach complemented by a bottom-up stock picking process.
Between its launch in August 2002 and the end of March the fund returned more than 24 per cent per annum. The firm was founded by Jedwab and Morris Safdié, a member of the family that founded the private banking franchise that includes the former Commercial Bank of New York and Geneva’s Bank Safdié.
The Guinness Energy Fund is run by Tim Guinness, the former chief executive of Guinness Flight Hambro Asset Management and joint chairman of Investec Asset Management until 2003, who manages the portfolio with his son Edward. Guinness also runs the USD1.5bn Investec Global Energy Fund, which has been the top performing long-only energy fund for five of the past eight years, generating a cumulative performance of 481 per cent, or an annualised 24.6 per cent. The Guinness Energy Fund was set up last July and delivered 14.19 per cent net of fees up to the end of April.
Fortune Asset Management is a London-based alternative asset management firm offering multi-manager and single-manager hedge fund products as well as customised portfolio management for private wealth management groups, family offices, insurance companies, banks and public and private pension funds. Fortune, which has raised more than USD2.5bn in early stage funding for start-up European hedge funds, is a member of the Close Brothers Group, which manages USD17bn in assets of which half is invested in alternatives.
