Common Sense Investment Management has launched a new business line, Liquid Strategies, to complement the firm’s existing hedge fund business.
Led by a team of industry veterans, Liquid Strategies will invest in managed futures managers using a combination of non-finance techniques and patented risk management processes. Ted Gutierrez and Mel Meinhardt have been appointed to guide Liquid Strategies as co-chief investment officers.
Gutierrez will be primarily responsible for the investment process. Formerly a managing director and management committee member at Credit Suisse First Boston, Gutierrez was involved in investment and operational innovations during some of the European markets' historically most volatile periods. Later working for Montgomery Securities and again at Cowen and Co, Gutierrez continued to develop the insights into cross border market behaviour and that will be his focus at CSIM.
"The improved liquidity and transparency of select international markets has made it possible to significantly reduce downside risk while creating real opportunities. CSIM is the perfect fit to create innovative vehicles to leverage those opportunities," Gutierrez says.
Gutierrez started in finance in 1982, after graduating from UC Berkeley's MBA programme. He traded options for AG Becker on the American Stock Exchange, and later was an independent market maker in options. Gutierrez advised the Deutsche Bourse (German Stock Exchange) on which he had previously been a member, created and managed joint ventures with European banks (BNP Paribas and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB)), and advised large North American pensions.
As co-CIO, Meinhardt designed and will implement the technologies & processes underpinning the Liquid Strategies products. Formerly a portfolio manager with SEB, Meinhardt has partnered with Gutierrez for more than ten years. Meinhardt's prior experiences include advanced technology manager and analyst roles at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where he specialised in the identification, acquisition and implementation of new technologies. After leaving the CIA, Meinhardt worked for technology firms including Westinghouse, largely in strategic roles.
"We believe bringing leading edge and reliable control systems to portfolio management can create new opportunities and improved risk management," Meinhardt says.
Prior to the CIA, Meinhardt served as an officer and nuclear engineer on submarines in the US Navy.
Jonathan Gane, CEO of CSIM, says: "Ted and Mel bring over a decade of research and product development in the Managed Futures space. Coupling their backgrounds with our recent hiring of Marc Lorin from Newedge — a leading prime broker for Managed Futures strategies — it represents a substantial and exciting step forward for CSIM and our product suite. We believe the engineered and algorithmically constructed products, utilising managed futures managers at their core, will offer our investors a differentiated and uncorrelated return stream to complement our existing equity alternative strategies."
