Fund Manager Interviews

Alex Krainer, portfolio manager for the newly-launched Altana Inflation Trends Fund, says the fund was created to meet the challenge of an ongoing global economic crisis and a debt overhang in most of the world’s advanced economies that will have to be resolved through either deflationary deleveraging or high inflation – each of which should lead to significant asset prices readjustments. »

Ian Langton (pictured), co-manager of Xenfin Capital’s Managed Growth Program, says that while commodity, futures and currency strategies should benefit from investors’ desire for returns that are not correlated with traditional asset classes, alternative investment managers face the challenge that as more participants enter these markets, the benefit of diversification declines and correlation with traditional asset classes increases, along with volatility. »

Jing Sun, investment director and fund manager for the PSigma Global Equity Fund at New York-based Centre Asset Management, says the fund, launched last June, focuses on the fundamentals of wealth creation and destruction akin to the way a traditional, long-term-focused corporate financier looking at all aspects of the business, including operating condition, risk profile and valuation, would assess it. »

Dr Jan Auspurg (pictured), a fund manager within the quant team at Hamburg-based Aquila Capital, says the AC Spectrum Fund, a Luxembourg-domiciled Ucits that generated a return of 9.98 per cent last August amid massive equity market losses, takes into account not only the strengths of trend-following strategies but their weaknesses, such as a tendency to perform less well in sideways-trading markets or in times of sudden trend reversals. »

Emanuel Arbib, chief executive of Integrated Asset Management, says the firm’s sale of the bulk of its institutional fund of hedge funds business to former shareholder Sal. Oppenheim at the height of the crisis proved timely, but Integrated now is looking to scale back up through acquisitions in Europe or the US.  »

Amit Shabi (pictured), chief executive of Paris-based event-driven and merger arbitrage specialist Bernheim, Dreyfus & Co, says the firm’s Diva Synergy fund and its recently-launched Ucits version is poised to capitalise on an expected pick-up in European M&A volumes, which should create more lucrative investment opportunities and better performance. »

Mayfair Capital founder and executive director Guy Brogden (pictured) says the property fund manager has been able to take advantage of the difficult economic climate by reducing overall portfolio gearing through making unleveraged property acquisitions with freshly-raised capital, which continues to flow in from investors including charities, institutions, pension funds, companies, high net worth private clients and family offices. »

HFT Capital founder chief investment officer and head trader Romy Jardine and head of business development Bob Torkelund (pictured) say that in a difficult market environment where investors are extremely cautious and nervous, highly-performing niche strategies that “dare to be different” are still capable of attracting money from investors seeking non-correlated returns. »

Thomas Graff (pictured), a partner and member of the fixed-income team at USD25bn investment manager Brown Advisory and portfolio manager for the Tactical Bond Fund launched in September, says the fund stands out from the competition through the way the firm uses quantitative models and the holistic way it approaches its portfolios. »

Chin Pu Ma and Chien Wang (pictured), partners and chief investment officer and chief operating officer respectively of Amsterdam-based Asian Century Capital, are looking to attract investors with an eight-year track record of successful investment in Asia on behalf of Dutch banks and an investment style that combines macro themes, a disciplined value-orientated approach, in-house research and the flexibility to go either long or short. »