Visium Asset Management has launched the Visium Event Driven Fund (VIDVX), the first mutual fund offering for the alternative asset management firm.
Founded in 2005, Visium manages in excess of USD4.7bn in assets as of 30 June 2013 across six private funds.
The Visium Event Driven Fund’s investment objective is to achieve capital growth while maintaining a low correlation to the US equity markets. The fund is managed with a flexible blend of two complementary strategies (special situations and merger arbitrage) that are used to target the securities of primarily North American companies that the fund’s portfolio managers believe will be impacted by pending or anticipated corporate events.
The special situations strategy is managed by Francis X Gallagher, a 29-year industry veteran who joined Visium in 2011 upon the completion of a strategic transaction with Catalyst Investment Management. This strategy invests in opportunities where particular anticipated events in a company’s life cycle could lead to a significant increase in the security’s value over a specific period of time.
Peter A Drippe manages the merger arbitrage strategy, which invests in securities where there may be an opportunity to capture the spread between the security price at announcement and the price upon completion of a transaction. Drippe has 28 years of industry experience and joined Visium with Gallagher in 2011.
The Visium Event Driven Fund was converted from a private fund format with the same investment objective. Gallahger and Drippe have managed the private fund since 2001.
"We are thrilled to offer our event driven strategy in a mutual fund format. The fund allows investors of all sizes the opportunity to take advantage of a strategy that seeks to provide equity-like returns with low volatility comparable to that of a high-quality fixed income portfolio," says Jacob Gottlieb, managing partner and chief investment officer of Visium Asset Management. "We believe the fund is an excellent addition to an investor’s core portfolio."
