Platinum Capital Management has teamed up with leading Swedish investment manager Catella Asset Management to launch the Platinum Nordic Fund.
Platinum Capital Management has teamed up with leading Swedish investment manager Catella Asset Management to launch the Platinum Nordic Fund.
The new fund is focused on hedged investment in, principally, equities in Europe’s Nordic region and is based on the investment programme launched by Catella (part of Kamrad/IKEA) in January 2002. Since then, this programme has returned in excess of 23% pa with a standard deviation of some 8.9% – barely half the standard deviation of the MSCI Europe Index on six times better average annual returns.
The programme has also shown resilience during the recent difficult period for shares. During the first five months of 2006 (to end-May), the Catella programme gained 7.72% by comparison to the MSCI’s growth of 4.12%. In the difficult month of May itself, the Catella programme fell 3.19% compared with a loss of 9.09% in the MSCI.
The investment strategy underlying the Platinum Nordic Fund is based on the development of concentrated equity portfolios accented by significant individual holdings. The potential investment universe is broad and covers major and mid-cap companies across a range of sectors. For example, in February 2006, the Manager’s largest investments were in the ‘Materials’ segment but seven other segments, including ‘Consumer Staples’, ‘Financials’, ‘Paper & Pulp’ and ‘Pharmaceuticals’ each represented more than 5% of total equity holding.
As well as direct purchase, the Fund’s exposure to equities is achieved via options. On the other side, the portfolio is hedged with index derivatives, asset allocation into fixed-income products or, again, via options. Platinum Nordic Fund is offered in three currency classes (US dollars, sterling and euros) with minimum investment of USD 50,000, EUR 50,000 or GBP 40,000.
‘With Platinum Nordic, we now offer hedged access to the four economies of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden that have a combined market capitalization of over USD 1trillion,’ says Peter Sprecher, Founder and Chairman of Platinum Capital Management. ‘Given Platinum Group’s strong links with this region (ie through, our Associated Office in Stockholm), we have, for some time, been actively seeking a top investment manager to partner us in product development here and with Catella and its foundation in Kamrad/IKEA, we believe we have found the very best.’
Background notes: Catella Asset Management is an investment manager within the Kamrad Group (IKEA). It is an important and substantial operation with over 20 asset managers and more than $3bn under management. Catella is focused on the generation of absolute (alpha) returns, primarily from a concentration of assets into some 30 to 35 lines. The Manager sees dividend yield from the portfolio as an important contributor to overall growth.
