European asset management major Amundi, has partnered with $1.5bn special situations hedge find firm, Sand Grove Capital Management (Sand Grove) to launch a new event-driven UCITS fund, the Amundi Sand Grove Event Driven Fund.
Available on the Amundi Alternatives UCITS platform, the fund employs a global event-driven equity strategy with a European tilt and seeks to capitalise on mispricings in corporate events such as takeovers, mergers, exchange offers, restructurings and liquidations.
According to a press statement, the fund draws on Sand Grove’s founder and CIO Simon Davies’ 22 years of expertise in event-driven investing, to “deploy a differentiated value-biased and contrarian approach by focusing on less-followed and more complex situations”. The fund’s stated objective is to generate alpha with low correlation to equity markets, while “applying a rigorous and fundamental investment process based on a disciplined risk management framework”.
The fund’s investment strategy is a combination of two sub-strategies: merger-arbitrage, consisting of deals triggered by hard catalyst events, such as formally announced and contractual M&A[6] transactions; and equity special situations, with deals triggered by corporate catalyst events, such as spin-offs, divestments, asset sales or other pre- and post-M&A activities.
