Funds
Following a challenging first half of the year, CTAs continued their upwards trajectory in August, with their second positive month, up 2.07 per cent. The developments in H2 are taking CTAs almost back into positive territory.
The SG CTA Mutual Index was also up 0.83 per cent in August and back to flat year to date.
The returns were primarily driven by trend following, the SG Trend Index was the biggest winner, up 2.61 per cent, although some individual CTA returns were higher. Short term trading strategies had a very mixed month, as the individual constituent CTA returns ranged
Having managed a successful UK High Alpha strategy for Institutional Clients for over 13 years, Mirabaud Asset Management has decided to reposition its existing UK Equity High Income Fund into a High Alpha Strategy from 1 October.
The fund will be managed by Jeremy Hewlett, who is in the UK Equity Team headed by David Kneale.
The Mirabaud – Equities UK High Alpha fund will be an unconstrained, actively managed, high conviction, concentrated portfolio of best ideas. The team look for quality businesses with strong barriers to entry and which are cash flow generative over multiple years.
“Mirabaud
The alternative assets industry reached a record size as of the end of 2016, according to the latest performance analysis data released by Preqin examining assets under management, horizon returns, public market equivalents and top performing funds.
Hedge funds saw their assets hit a record USD3.25 trillion, despite net investor outflows through the year. Private capital funds, meanwhile, increased their assets by over 7 per cent, from USD4.27 trillion as of the end of 2015 to USD4.59 trillion 12 months later. Private equity funds represent the largest proportion at USD2.58 trillion, followed by real estate (USD785 billion), private debt (USD605
Deutsche Börse and Illuminate Financial Management have co-led in a USD5 million Series A funding round in RegTek.Solutions, a multi-jurisdiction regulatory reporting solutions provider.
Based in New York, RegTek.Solutions was launched earlier this year as a specialist provider of global regulatory compliance software by Risk Focus Inc, a risk and regulatory services firm. RegTek.Solutions provides innovative trade reporting solutions and cost-effective compliance software (Report-It) enabling firms to improve the quality, transparency and control of regulatory reporting obligations across multiple jurisdictions and asset classes, including OTC Swaps, Credit, Rates and Equity, as well as FX and Commodities trading. The firm counts ten
PEGAS, the pan-European gas trading platform operated by Powernext, has launched the European Gas Spot Market Index (EGSI), which will cover all liquid gas spot markets operated by PEGAS.
Along with the launch of EGSI, PEGAS will also harmonise the use of existing indices for the futures market.


The introduction of EGSI will allow market participants to better mirror short-term price developments in their contracts. As a result of the opening and liberalisation of the European Gas markets, the importance of transparent prices determined on supervised exchanges has increased further. The substitution of oil-indexed pricing by gas-hub pricing is
Nasdaq is to acquire eVestment, an industry leading content and analytics provider used by asset managers, investment consultants and asset owners to help facilitate institutional investment decisions.
The acquisition is expected to deliver attractive shareholder returns with a combination of recurring, predictable revenue, a strong track record of growth and attractive cash flow dynamics.
eVestment provides institutional investors the largest, most comprehensive database for both traditional and alternative strategies, including as many as 2,800 individual data points on more than 74,000 investment vehicles. eVestment has more than 2,000 clients, including 92 per cent of the top asset managers, 76
By Don Steinbrugge (pictured), Agecroft Partners – Hedge fund managers focused on structured credit strategies can be simplistically divided into two categories: beta managers or alpha generators. Many investors believe the beta opportunity born out of the financial crisis has substantially run its course.
As such, they find risk adjusted returns from structured credit beta managers are not particularly attractive. On the other hand, inefficiencies in the structured credit markets persist, providing opportunities to generate strong, alpha-driven risk adjusted returns relative to other hedge fund strategies.
Beta managers are defined as primarily long biased managers with some leverage. Typically their net
LRI Group, the leading independent investment services company, has partnered with TAO Alternatives to launch its liquid alternative investment strategy, which has assets of more than EUR 250 million.
The investment strategy has been managed since 2007 and is available to institutional investors in the Opportunities Fund, as UCITS and Luxembourg Specialised Investment Fund (SIF). The CACEIS Bank Luxembourg Branch is acting Fund Administrator and Custodian.
TAO Alternatives is managed by fund managers, Dr Lukas Goetz and Achim Motamedi. The name ‘TAO Alternatives’ derives from their book ‘The Art of Alternative Investing’.
Goetz is an experienced fund manager
Global Jet Capital, a provider of financing solutions for corporate aircraft, believes more private equity firms and hedge funds are considering entering the business aviation finance sector to diversify their portfolios and reduce their exposure to equities and bonds and any potential market correction.
The company also believes that the price of mid to heavy private jets is beginning to stabilide following several years of falling valuations, and this is also making business aviation finance more appealing to private equity firms and hedge funds.
Global Jet Capital is capitalised by three global investment firms – GSO Capital Partners, a
For the first time since October 2016, the monthly performance of Event-Driven funds was in negative territory in August. The strategy remains nonetheless the stellar performer in 2017, up 5.7 per cent year to date according to the Lyxor Event Driven Broad index.
The summer air pocket was mainly due to the negative returns delivered by special situations funds (-1.8 per cent in August) which suffered losses on consumer holdings. Health care stocks such as NuVasive and Zimmer Biomet detracted from performance earlier in the month; while more recently Sotheby’s and Nestle dragged down the returns of special situations funds.
