York Capital Management and Bank of America Merrill Lynch have launched the York Event Driven Ucits Fund. 

York has been appointed as the investment manager to the fund with Merrill Lynch International acting as sponsor.

The fund was launched on 29 July 2009 and has already raised approximately USD100m assets under management. It is the third fund to be established on Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Ucits compliant Luxembourg Sicav - Merrill Lynch Investment Solutions - and the first event driven strategy therein.

“Our investment approach couples fundamental, research-driven financial and business analysis with an experienced view of global markets and industrial trends,” says Christophe Aurand (pictured), chief executive officer of York UK Advisors. “The fund's investment objective is to achieve attractive risk-adjusted returns, by targeting companies experiencing corporate catalysts, and the fund benefits from operating through a first class Ucits III platform.”

Eric Personne, EMEA head of the fund solutions group at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, says: “We are delighted that York Capital Management has chosen the MLIS platform in order to effectively utilise the Ucits III framework. York is already beginning to gain sizeable momentum and we are very excited about the future growth prospects of the fund.”

The fund follows a multi-strategy, event-driven investment style, trading in risk arbitrage, event equities, value equities strategies and credit. The portfolio managers of the fund are Jamie Dinan, York's founder and chief executive, and Dan Schwartz, York's chief investment officer.

The fund is a regulated, Luxembourg onshore vehicle, with protection for investors through the Ucits III framework of rigorous risk, diversification, counterparty exposure, liquidity and eligible asset constraints. Processes relating to the running of the fund, including matters such as risk management, independent oversight and protection of assets, have been approved by the Luxembourg regulator.

The fund is available for sale to institutional and retail investors in UK, Ireland, France, Italy and Spain with a minimum investment size for the retail share classes of USD1,000. The fund is not for sale to US persons.