Funds
An overwhelming majority (91 per cent) of investors in alternatives believe that the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will help the financial industry address pressing environmental and social issues.
A quarter of them already integrate the SDGs into their investment activities in some way, while another 40 per cent plan to do so within the next two years.
In a new study, LGT Capital Partners surveyed over 200 investors in alternatives (including pension funds, endowments and insurers from 28 countries). The survey assesses how investors integrate ESG into their investment activities, their views on the SDGs, and their requirements
Fairtree Asset Management (Pty) Ltd, a multi-strategy alternative and long only investment manager established in 2003, has selected Prescient Fund Services Ireland as the UCITS Management Company and Fund Administrator for its first Irish UCITS fund.
The Fairtree Global Flexible Income Plus Fund, launched in January 2019, is a sub-fund on the Prescient Global Funds platform.
The fund’s primary objective is the generation of a high level of current income primarily through investment in debt and debt-related securities.
Fund manager, Paul Crawford, who heads up his fixed income investment team from London, says: “Investment markets are not always efficient and
Mosaic Smart Data, a real-time capital markets data analytics company, has completed an USD9 million investment round to support its rapid product development and global expansion.
The round was co-led by CommerzVentures and Octopus Ventures and includes JP Morgan – an existing investor and client.
Daily trading activity in the capital markets generates vast quantities of raw transaction and pricing data. Institutions are increasingly looking to extract the value from this, largely untapped, data asset. Annual spending on data analytics and market data has now grown to over USD30.5 billion a year. Being able to refine this raw data
Hedge fund managers ended March 2019 up 0.77 per cent on an equal-weighted basis, and 0.45 per cent on an asset-weighted basis. Roughly 78.0 per cent of the hedge fund managers tracked by Eurekahedge recorded positive returns over the first quarter of the year.
Fund managers focusing on Asia topped the chart with their 5.66 per cent year-to-date returns. Across strategies, long/short equities mandate outperformed their peers in the first quarter.
Hedge fund closure activities dwindled during the first quarter of 2019, with 79 liquidations recorded thus far, compared to 155 recorded in 2018 Q1.
J Stern & Co, a London and Zurich-based Private Investment Office, has launched its successful World Stars Global Equity strategy in a Luxembourg UCITS fund.
The World Stars Global Equity Fund has been launched following investor demand for a more accessible way of investing in the World Stars Global Equity strategy. The Fund has been made available in a Luxembourg UCITS IV format, using the Alpha UCITS SICAV, the leading Luxembourg UCITS platform.
The World Stars Global Equity strategy, which is unconstrained and does not track a benchmark, invests in a concentrated selection of 20-30 shares in leading global companies with enduring competitive advantages and a
Total net assets of UCITS and AIFs increased by 1.7 per cent to EUR16,030 billion in February, according to The European Fund and Asset Management Association’s (EFAMA) latest Investment Fund Industry Fact Sheet.
Bernard Delbecque, Senior Director for Economics and Research at EFAMA. says: “Net total assets of UCITS and AIFs crossed again the 16 trillion-euro mark in February, following the robust recovery in world capital markets since the beginning of the year.”
Net sales of UCITS and AIFs totalled EUR13 billion, down from EUR28 billion in January, with UCITS registering net inflows of EUR6 billion, down from EUR23 billion in January. Long-term
Brooks Macdonald Group’s Discretionary Funds under Management (FUM) for the third quarter ended 31 March 2019 totalled GBP12.8 billion, an increase of 7.9 per cent over the quarter (31 December 2018: GBP11.9 billion).
By comparison, the MSCI WMA Balanced Index increased by 6.9 per cent over the period.
The increase was driven by net new business of GBP166 million (+1.4 per cent) and investment performance of GBP773 million (+6.5 per cent).
UK Investment Management added net flows of GBP152 million (+1.5 per cent) and performance gains of GBP742 million (+7.2 per cent), while international had positive net new business of
FWM Holdings, the parent company of Forbes Family Trust (FFT) and LGL Partners, multi-family offices serving ultra-high-net worth families, is to acquire Optima Fund Management (Optima).
Optima is a New York-based private investment firm specialising in alternative investments.
As part of the transaction, Optima founder D Dixon Boardman will join FFT as Vice Chairman, effective immediately. He will remain Chief Executive Officer of Optima, which will become an independent, wholly-owned entity of FWM Holdings.
“Dixon and his investment team have been pioneers in the hedge fund industry for more than 30 years, and we are excited to welcome a trusted
Oak, a new private client, corporate services and fund administration group, has acquired International Administration Group (IAG).
Founded in 2000 by Mark Woodall and Alison Simpson, IAG is a specialist fund administration business headquartered in Guernsey with a team of 43 people. IAG delivers bespoke fund administration and depositary services to private equity, open-ended, listed and alternative asset fund structures and will become the centre of fund expertise within the Oak business.
Oak, which is headquartered in Guernsey, launched in March this year. The business is the consolidation of Oak Trust Group, Consortia Partnership and Kreston IOM which between them
The State Street Global Investor Confidence Index (ICI) increased to 72.9 in April, up 1.7 points from March’s revised reading of 71.2.
Confidence among North American investors improved, with the North American ICI rising from 68.3 to 71.1. The European ICI declined by 1.5 points to 86.7 and the Asia ICI decreased by 6.7 points to 92.9.
The Investor Confidence Index was developed by Kenneth Froot and Paul O’Connell at State Street Associates, State Street Global Exchange’s research and advisory services business. It measures investor confidence or risk appetite quantitatively by analysing the actual buying and selling patterns of institutional
