Jersey-based alternative investment manager Ermitage Group has announced that its specialist Resources Fund has benefited from ongoing attractive performance and increasing investor intere
Jersey-based alternative investment manager Ermitage Group has announced that its specialist Resources Fund has benefited from ongoing attractive performance and increasing investor interest in commodities to become the latest Ermitage fund of hedge funds to reach USD100m in assets under management.
The Resources Fund, which had assets of some USD110m at the beginning of the year, employs an active management approach to target superior risk-adjusted performance to passive long-only commodity indices – and avoid some of the structural pitfalls of index tracking for commodity exposure.
The fund’s management process ensures flexibility is available to access the high potential areas of niche strategies and early-stage managers, and offers investors diversification across global markets, sectors, styles and themes.
The Resources Fund joins Ermitage’s two new funds for 2007, the European Multi Strategy Fund and Global Long Short Fund, in attracting post-launch investment that has seen assets under management surpass USD100m for each fund.
‘We believe ongoing positive demand/supply fundamentals will create future opportunities for commodity investments to deliver absolute returns and diversification benefits to investors,’ says Ermitage chief investment officer Jonathan Wauton.
‘The Resources Fund is well positioned to deliver these benefits to investors in a more intelligent and diversified way than passive commodity exposure – aiming to deliver ‘commodity returns’ with low long-term correlation to equity and bond markets.
‘Since launch, the fund has produced better absolute performance than passive commodity indices, and done so with lower volatility. These attributes give the Resources Fund the qualities needed to be considered for core commodity exposure as well as for the active satellite component of large multi-asset funds.’
Dan McAlister, Ermitage’s commodity strategy specialist, adds, ‘The Resources Fund has delivered an annual return of over 15 per cent with a volatility of 7 per cent since inception (Class D USD). This performance compares very favourably with the long-only commodity indices – and on a risk-adjusted return basis the contrast is even greater.’
