Funds
Hedge funds indices were overall positive during the past week but most strategies contributed negatively, according to the latest Weekly Brief from Lyxor’s Cross Asset Research team.
Lyxor writes: “CTAs, which are short USD and long energy retracted, while Diversified and Neutral L/S Equity funds destroyed some alpha this week, reflecting counter-intuitive sector rotations.
“By contrast, the sudden reversal in many M&A deal spreads contributed to boost Merger funds. The average deal spread of our basket of 75 tradable merger deals reverted back to 7 per cent from 10 per cent a week ago.”
PEGAS, the pan-European gas trading platform operated by Powernext, registered a total volume of 147.7 TWh in March 2018, including 1.3 TWh on its options segment.
The spot and futures markets reported a total of 146.4 TWh which represents a year-to-year growth of 19 per cent (March 2017: 123.4 TWh), thanks mainly to an increase on PEGAS TTF Spot and Futures and a record-breaking month on PEGAS CEGH VTP Futures.
Spot trading volumes in April amounted to 77.6 TWh, up 22 per cent over the previous year (63.4 TWh). The Dutch market area TTF registered 29.9 TWh, a growth
Apex Fund Services (Apex) is rebranding Equinoxe Alternative Investment Services’ Bermuda entity as Apex Insurance Fund Services. This change reflects Apex’s established 15 year presence and comprehensive offering in the Bermuda market.
Apex announced its acquisition of Equinoxe Bermuda in May last year in conjunction with the support of Genstar Capital to recapitalise the company.
Apex Insurance Fund Services will be led by Matthew Charleson, who joined the Group as Head of Insurance Fund Services in 2017. He previously served as Head of Fund Administration Services at Kane LPI Solutions.
“The successful re-brand of Equinoxe Bermuda to ‘Apex
Alcentra, the alternative fixed income specialist for BNY Mellon Investment Management (IM), has held the final close of Clareant Structured Credit Opportunities Fund III at USD513 million, surpassing its fundraising target of USD300 million.
This fundraising brings assets under management for Alcentra’s structured credit platform to over USD4.5 billion across a combination of open and closed end funds and separately managed accounts, and firm AUM to USD37.4 billion.
The Fund’s objective is to generate attractive absolute and risk-adjusted returns through opportunistic investing in structured credit debt and equity securities in the US and Europe. The Fund’s investors include leading
The European Energy Exchange (EEX) increased volumes on its power derivatives markets by 12 per cent in April 2018 to 246.6 TWh (April 2017: 220.7 TWh).
In particular, the markets for Italy (38.8 TWh, +100 per cent) and France (19.8 TWh, +48 per cent) contributed to this development. Also the smaller markets for Spain (7.2 TWh, +54 per cent) and the Netherlands (4.3 TWh, +358 per cent) recorded significant growth. In Options on Phelix-DE Futures, at 36.7 TWh, EEX achieved the highest volume since the launch of this product.
The April volume comprised 158.3 TWh traded at EEX via
River and Mercantile Derivatives, part of River and Mercantile Group, has been awarded a GBP1.2 billion structured equity options mandate for Worcestershire County Council Pension Fund (the Fund).
The Fund was seeking downside protection for its passive UK, US and European equities, with a combined market value of approximately GBP1.2 billion. De-risking by moving from equities to other asset classes at this stage of the cycle would have reduced return expectations for the Fund and impacted the affordability of future benefits to members. Instead, the Fund determined that an equity protection solution would be the most suitable way to maintain
The EQ Derivatives survey finds that alternative risk premia strategies have been adopted by innovative pension funds around the globe since the Global Financial Crisis, with assets invested in the strategies now poised to grow 35 per cent by 2019 to USD67 billion.
Investors — including pension funds, life insurance companies, family offices and private banks — are turning to alternative risk premia due to the diversification benefits, lower fees versus hedge funds and positive performance, according to the firm.
“The 2008 Global Financial Crisis laid bare risks in investments that had seemed diversified. Alternative risk premia have emerged
Fulcrum Asset Management (Fulcrum) has launched the Fulcrum Diversified Liquid Alternatives Fund (the Fund), an unconstrained portfolio investing across real assets, alternative credit and diversifiers.
The Fund has a target return of cash +4 per cent per annum over rolling five-year periods with lower volatility than equity markets. The Fund offers daily liquidity with no performance fees.
The UK-domiciled daily dealing NURS fund will invest in collectives, as well as direct investments and is the first fund to be launched by the new Fulcrum Alternative Strategies team, drawing on long experience of managing portfolios of third-party long-only and hedge
Hedge funds were down in sync with the wider market downturn last week, according to the latest Weekly Brief from Lyxor’s Cross Asset Research team.
CTAs underperformed due to their long exposures to US equities and their long EUR and GBP versus USD. The rise in oil prices helped alleviate some losses.
L/S Equity were also on the downside. US and EM funds were the main detractors in line with their underlying benchmarks. US managers particularly suffered from sector rotations.
The widening in M&A deal spreads including NXP vs. Qualcomm hit Merger arbitrageurs.
Market Neutral and relative
DealCloud, a specialist in CRM and deal management in the private capital markets, and PitchBook, the data provider for the private and public equity markets, have formed a strategic partnership to integrate PitchBook data within the DealCloud DataCortex.
With the launch of this partnership, DealCloud clients can now search and query PitchBook’s data sets directly from within the DealCloud platform, including hard-to-find financial data on private and public companies, investors, funds, limited partners and service providers. PitchBook’s data – which is captured by web crawlers, machine learning technology and verified by specialised data teams – is increasingly sought after by
