Emerging market long/short equity specialist, Finisterre Capital, this week announced the launch of the Finisterre Equity Fund, a global emerging market equity strategy that seeks to maximise absolute returns and keep volatility at a reduced level relative to the market and peers. Alistair Candlish and Edward Cole are joint portfolio managers of the new fund. Both were hired from Newsmith last summer where they jointly ran Newsmith’s EM equity fund. The fund uses a top-down macro approach to select stocks within the global business cycle and uses swaps and options to hedge the portfolio. Finisterre has a nine-year track record trading emerging market asset classes on a long/short basis but this is the first time its expertise has been extended to a dedicated equity strategy. The fund started trading last November with USD25million of seed capital but Finisterre plans on opening it up to external investors in the second quarter of 2012. Paul Crean (pictured), co-founder and CIO of Finisterre Capital, said that there had been growing investor demand for a Finisterre equity fund, adding: “The new fund nicely complements our existing emerging markets offerings, and rounds out our EM product range.” Said Cole: “There are big benefits for Alistair and I in being part of a dedicated emerging market specialist like Finisterre. Working alongside other experienced EM specialists investing across EM assets has been highly additive to our process.” The fund targets net annualised returns of 15 to 20 per cent with a target volatility of 10 to 13 per cent. Minimum investment is USD1million.