The Juggernaut Asia Fund established by Yashwant Bajaj (pictured), a former Lehman Brothers managing director, has so far lived up to its name.
The Juggernaut Asia Fund established by Yashwant Bajaj (pictured), a former Lehman Brothers managing director, has so far lived up to its name. Since it launched 1 August last year it has generated an impressive 45 per cent by betting on equity capital market deals and shorting companies like Olympus Corp, reported Reuters this week. Short-term trading and the fund’s event-driven strategy had produced two thirds of the fund’s returns said Bajaj, with equity l/s having contributed the least. October alone saw the fund generate an incredible 32 per cent with gains coming from six of the seven IPOs and secondary deals it had targeted. The fund has not yet been marketed to outside investors with Bajaj running around USD5million of both his own and family money. He is, however, apparently in talks with hedge fund seeders to raise assets. Bajaj hopes to raise another USD5million over the next two months and get to an AUM of USD30million by August 2012. As for the short side of the book, Bajaj wrote in an October investor letter: “In Japan, our short positioning and trading around Olympus was a notable contributor as were our technology long book names.” Bajaj founded and ran Hachiman Capital Management’s Japan-focused hedge fund between 2005 and 2010 and has 20 years of sell-side experience in Japanese and Asian equities. The fund closed December 2010, prompting Bajaj to launch the Juggernaut fund in August. “I have relaunched the same fund structure but have broadened it out to be an Asia fund,” said Bajaj.
