Hong Kong-based Athos Capital Ltd, who went into partnership with Ascalon Capital Managers, a unit of Australia’s Westpac Banking Corp, at the end of 2011, aim to launch an Asia Pacific event-driven hedge fund on 9 April reported Reuters this week. Ascalon forms long-term partnerships with leading high conviction and alternative managers in Asia Pacific and has a 35 per cent stake in Athos. Ascalon CEO Andrew Landman (pictured) was quoted as saying: “Ascalon will be the seed investor in the product.” Being an event-driven strategy, the fund will look to profit from hard catalysts such as publicly announced company events including M&As and spin-offs, taking long or short positions depending on whether the managers think the action succeeds or fails. Typically, in M&As, managers take a long position in the target company and a short position in the acquiring company. Athos received its trading license from the SEC on Tuesday. It was founded by former Omni Asia and Centaurus Capital event-driven veterans Matthew Moskey and Erik Senko, and Fred Schulte-Hillen who was formally at Black’s Link Capital.