French UCITS hedge fund sees assets increase a staggering 2600 per cent

Lutetia Capital, a Paris-headquartered independent asset manager, celebrated the birthday of its Lutetia Patrimoine Fund by confirming that assets in the fund, which was launched on 27^th November 2009, had grown an astonishing 2600 per cent. Launched by co-founders Jean-Francois Comte (pictured) and Fabrice Seiman, with USD3million, it has since rocketed to approximately USD80million. The UCITS-III absolute return fund is an event-driven market neutral strategy, specializing in merger arbitrage to chase alpha. North American and European corporations involved in M&A transactions are the core focus for investment, the portfolio consisting of 30 to 40 positions held in medium to large-cap securities. Since inception the fund has returned 6.46 per cent and is up +5.02 per cent YTD, putting it in the top percentile in a range of newcits databases under the ‘event-driven’ category. As if that wasn’t enough, the fund, with a YTD Sharpe Ratio of 3.46, ranks number one out of 299 funds and FoFs in Bloomberg’s ‘Equity Market Neutral’ category and was recently nominated for two awards by Morningstar’s Tremplin-Multiratings Awards. All of which gives Lutetia plenty of good reason for feeling optimistic. Co-founder Fabrice Seiman said they launched the fund with the goal of “democratising” hedge fund strategies, adding that they’d shown not only that their strategy could work, but that it could excel in delivering consistent, risk-adjusted returns. “As we say, slow and steady wins the race,” said Seiman. “With the M&A cycle continuing to accelerate, we see great things for this fund.”