Epsilon Asset Management has opened for business having secured capital commitments for each of its three strategies in excess of USD100 million. Additionally, Epsilon has secured seed capital from William Cline (former CEO of hedge fund Clovis Capital, partner at Alcova Capital).
Led by Adam Lavin, Faryan Amir-Ghassemi (pictured), and Michael Perlow, Epsilon is an equity oriented manager aiming to bridge the divide between active and passive strategies.
Lavin, Amir-Ghassemi, and Perlow come from Novus Partners, a leader in providing analytics on active managers to institutional investors around the world. Previously, Lavin founded Alternative Investment Management, a multi-billion dollar hedge fund-of-funds. Prior to Novus, Amir-Ghassemi was a hedge fund analyst at Cambridge Associates, while Perlow was at Ipreo.Epsilon is focused on analysing public regulatory filings of active asset managers to create systematic, alpha-oriented portfolios. Epsilon launches its operations with three investment strategies focusing initially on domestic equities:
Epsilon Activist Strategy (EAS), geared towards identifying top activist managers and their top publicly disclosed positions, delivers a liquid and diversified access point to premium activist exposure. The portfolio averages 35-45 securities, diversified across market capitalisations mirroring the broader US equity market. A consortium of experts acts as consulting advisor to EAS: Richard Elden (founder and former chairman of Grosvenor Capital), Frank Meyer (former partner at Grosvenor, founder of Glenwood Capital Investments, co-founder of Citadel Investments), and John Cornish (former lead researcher of activists at Cambridge Associates, co-founder of Financial Diligence Networks). EAS is accessible through separately managed accounts.
Epsilon Sector-Balanced Fund (ESBF), an open ended mutual fund scheduled to launch in September, will be comprised of 50 securities, which match the market capitalisation and sector characteristics of the S&P 500. The fund aims to generate outperformance against the benchmark through superior security selection and meaningful active share. The fund will be distributed through Northern Lights.
Epsilon Unconstrained Strategy (EUS), a 30-security strategy that leverages Epsilon’s flagship statistical algorithm, is unconstrained from benchmarks or basis risk parameters. The strategy is accessible through separately managed accounts.
