New Star Asset Management has announced that following the close of a third public offering, the total size of Hedge ETS, which provides investors with exposure to the RBC Hedge 250 Index,
New Star Asset Management has announced that following the close of a third public offering, the total size of Hedge ETS, which provides investors with exposure to the RBC Hedge 250 Index, has increased to USD328m within seven months of its launch.
Between its inception on July 1, 2005 and May 31 this year, the index achieved an annualised return of 12.2 per cent, outperforming other recognised investible hedge fund and fund of hedge fund indices, on both an absolute and risk adjusted basis.
Says New Star director Ravi Anand: ‘Hedge ETS offers unique access to the performance of the hedge fund universe through a well constructed representative index, with the added benefit of daily liquidity.
‘Between its launch on 28 November 2006 and June 25, investors have benefited from performance of 8 per cent on the 1X shares and 20 per cent on the 3X shares. The third offering demonstrates continued demand from investors, and we are pleased that the total fund size now exceeds USD325m.’
The RBC Hedge 250 Index is designed to be a representative, investible benchmark of the performance of the hedge fund asset class, with diversification across 257 hedge funds and nine distinct strategies, asset-weighted by strategy and approximately equally-weighted initially by hedge fund. The assets under management of the hedge funds in the index totalled USD244bn at the end of May, according to RBC Capital Markets.
The index is currently dominated by long/short equity strategies, with 37.4 per cent of total assets and 93 funds, followed by multi-strategy with 15.2 per cent of assets and 38 funds, credit with 12.1 per cent and 31 funds, merger and special situations with 10.7 per cent and 27 funds, macro with 9.0 per cent and 23 funds, managed futures with 6.0 per cent and 15 funds, fixed income arbitrage with 4.8 per cent and 14 funds, convertible arbitrage with 2.3 per cent and nine funds, and equity market neutral with 2.5 per cent and seven funds.
