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MPC Investors opens fourth hedge fund

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MPC Investors has announced the opening to external investors of its discretionary macro hedge fund, MPC Strategic Opportunities Fund, following the USD900m launch of the MPC Samsara hedge

MPC Investors has announced the opening to external investors of its discretionary macro hedge fund, MPC Strategic Opportunities Fund, following the USD900m launch of the MPC Samsara hedge fund in September.

Managed by Miles Geldard, the MPC Strategic Opportunities fund was soft-launched in July this year with USD25m and has posted positive results for the difficult summer months, delivering a total return of 3.22 per cent to the end of September. MPC Investors will now look initially to raise up to USD500m for the fund.

The Strategic Opportunities fund aims to take advantage of macro opportunities throughout the world, using the same investment approach as the MPC Strategic Reserve Fund launched in January this year. It is available denominate in US dollars, euros and sterling; the custodian and administrator is HSBC and the prime brokers are UBS and Morgan Stanley.

MPC Strategic Opportunities uses the full flexibility available as a Cayman-domiciled fund, and is targeting returns of at least 15 per cent per annum with volatility of less than 9 per cent. The MPC Strategic Reserve Fund is a low-risk macro strategy with target returns of between 7 and 8 per cent per annum.

Geldard, whose team is now running more than USD700m at MPC Investors, has a fundamental contrarian-based approach and looks to implement his decisions through stocks where possible, structuring all his trades to achieve an asymmetry of the likely pay-off. At any one time the fund will be taking advantage of a number of different macro opportunities.

In addition to the Strategic Opportunities funds, MPC Investors manages the MPC Pilgrim Fund and Pilgrim Select Fund, managed by John Innes, and the MPC Samsara Fund, a pan-European equity long/short strategy, managed by Ajay Gambhir.

‘The financial markets and economic cycle are at an inflection point where central banks are torn between a focus on maintenance of growth or suppression of inflation,’ says Peter Harrison, chief executive at MPC Investors. ‘This environment provides one of the most exciting opportunities for macro funds that we have seen in a long time.

‘Having worked with Miles for 10 years I am convinced that his contrarian style is best suited to this kind of environment. I also believe that his approach differs to many of the macro funds in the market.

‘Not only does he have extensive experience across asset classes, regional markets and derivatives but his portfolio construction techniques also afford investors a complementary return and volatility profile to their other macro funds.’

Geldard and his assistant fund manager, Lee Manzi, joined MPC Investors from JPMorgan Asset Management in September 2006. Geldard has been managing macro strategies since 1998, when he joined Jardine Fleming in Asia, and subsequently was also responsible for GTAA for the group. He previously spent four years managing reserves at a central bank following a decade working on derivatives desks around the world.

MPC is an independent asset manager founded in 2000 that currently manages USD2.7bn in four hedge funds. The MPC Pilgrim and MPC Pilgrim Select funds managed by John Innes and his team are Anglo-European long/short equity funds with around GBP550m in assets. MPC Pilgrim has delivered a net return of over 114 per cent since its launch.

Geldard’s team run the MPC Global Convertibles and MPC Strategic Reserve funds that were launched in January and already have more than USD700m of assets. The firm also manages institutional mandates and regulated Ucits III funds.

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