Latin America-focused Copernico Capital Partners is paying a dividend to existing shareholders, reducing the size of the Copernico Argentina
Latin America-focused Copernico Capital Partners is paying a dividend to existing shareholders, reducing the size of the Copernico Argentina Fund.
Twenty per cent is being paid out in dividends and the size of the reduced fund will be USD 45 million. After the payout, Copernico will manage USD 300 million in total.
Ricardo Maxit, Founding Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Copernico said: ‘We believe Argentina’s recovery to be well-advanced. As a consequence and in line with our original mandate from investors to take advantage of Argentina’s recovery stage, we have taken this opportunity to reduce the size of the Copernico Argentina Fund and to concentrate on a smaller number of core positions which we expect will deliver a return consistent with the past performance of this vehicle’.
A spokesperson for Copernico added: ‘We are exiting from the cash position and mostly of our momentum strategies, while keeping those core positions, mainly event driven situations, which we consider will be able to generate the returns that the fund provided in the past’.
Launched in February 2003, the Copernico Argentina Fund was started with the specific purpose of enabling sophisticated investors to take part in the recovery of the Argentine economy after the devaluation in January 2002.
The fund has returned 96.42% since inception, which implies an annualized return of 25.34%. The fund has been closed to new investors since December 2004.
In addition to the Argentina Fund, Copernico also runs a pan-regional fund, the Copernico Latin American Strategic Fund. Launched in 1999 and listed on the Irish Stock Exchange, the Fund, with an average annual return of 15.63% and an annualized volatility of 3.58% since inception, continues to remain open to new investors.
Maxit adds: ‘Recent hires and continued investment in infrastructure are examples of our commitment to our business and the Latin American region. We will continue to capture and monitor relevant opportunities in Argentina through the Copernico Latin American Strategic Fund.’
Background notes: Founded in 1998, Copernico Capital Partners is an independent investment manager. It is a specialist in event driven and momentum strategies and focuses on Latin-American investment.
Copernico’s investment objective is to offer institutional investors consistent positive returns in a volatile region of the world, through conservative investment management.
The company has two funds: its flagship, launched in August 1999, the Copernico Latin American Strategic Fund, a Dublin registered Cayman Islands domiciled, multi-strategy vehicle with an event driven focus, and the Copernico Argentina Fund, a Cayman Islands domiciled fund, launched in February 2003, closed to new investors since December 2004.
Copernico has a staff of 17, including six senior investment professionals. Its partners have over 60 years’ investing experience in the region.
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