NewAlpha Asset Management, the Paris-based global fund incubation and acceleration specialist, has made a strategic investment with Naqvi-Van Ness Asset Management (Naqvi-Van Ness).
In 2001, Ali Naqvi and Albert Van Ness founded Naqvi–Van Ness Asset Management (NVAM) with founders’ capital to develop a systematic investment approach. This effort resulted in a research-intensive firm with proprietary models that utilise factors and insights underpinned by investor behavior and persistent biases.
Prior to founding NVAM, Naqvi gained extensive investment experience during 18 years at Citibank Global Asset Management, during which he was responsible for managing portfolios for large institutional clients. The portfolios under his supervision totalled nearly USD8 billion.
Co-founder of the Firm, Albert Van Ness was also a portfolio manager at Citibank Investment Management from 1994 to 2000. In 1994, he joined Ali Naqvi, managing portfolios for high net worth clients, pension plan sponsors, and sovereign investors totalling over USD1.2 billion in AUMs.
In 2010, Charles DuBois joined NVAM as Director of Investment Strategies and Research. He is now responsible for developing models and strategies and researching new investment ideas. Previously, DuBois was a Global Partner and Head of US Asset Allocation Strategies for the Global Structured Products Group of Invesco.
Naqvi-Van Ness' investment approach combines a core quantitative driven long-short strategy on US equities with uncorrelated opportunistic directional strategies that seek to detect and exploit potential changes in market behaviour.
The investment objective is to generate alpha and deliver absolute returns in all market environments. The strategy has been ranked by Bloomberg in the top 6 per cent amongst their peer group over the past 5 years, and in the top 10 per cent YTD (30/05/2016). Naqvi-Van Ness' flagship strategy has USD90 million dollars in AUM.
Naqvi says: “I am glad that our R&D efforts to apply our investment expertise in a highly liquid format succeeded in the successful development of our approach. This strategy is an innovative addition to the existing offering of classical hedge fund strategies and we view having on board an experienced investor like NewAlpha as an independent seal of approval regarding the thoroughness of our investment process and operations.”
Van Ness adds: “Furthermore, the NewAlpha investment will accelerate the growth and increase the attractiveness of the strategy. Having a strategic investment gives us an institutional level of credibility. Along with our differentiating strategy to Long/Short equity, this should be a positive combination for clients that have us on their radar.”
Antoine Rolland (pictured), CEO of NewAlpha, says: “We are very enthusiastic to enter this strategic partnership with Naqvi-Van Ness. During their career, Ali, Albert and Charles have consistently shown dedication and drive to deliver the highest quality in terms of investment research, market insights and portfolio management. Their investment strategy offers many benefits, including diversification and performance, even more so given recent market volatility.
“In addition, Naqvi-Van Ness and NewAlpha share common values and both organisations have an entrepreneurial corporate culture. As Europe’s leading incubator, NewAlpha is continuously seeking talented investment managers that are in their early stage of development or are looking for strategic partnerships to accelerate their growth.
