Funds
Ivy Investment Management Company (IICO) has partnered with sub-adviser firm PineBridge to launch the Ivy PineBridge High Yield Fund.
The fund is managed by IICO and sub-advised by PineBridge Investments, a firm with more than USD80 billion in assets under management.
The new fund seeks to provide total return through a combination of high current income and capital appreciation, primarily by investing in a diversified portfolio of high-yield, high-risk fixed income securities from both US and foreign issuers.
This fund joins the Ivy High Income Fund as an investment option offered by the firm in the high-yield
Hedge funds gained 0.69 per cent in April, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
After four consecutive profitable months, the index is now up 3.71 per cent in 2017.
This is the best start since 2013 when the Barclay Hedge Fund Index gained 4.74 per cent through April, and also began the year with four profitable months in a row. Over the past 14 months, the index has had 12 months of gains, and only two losses.
Fourteen hedge fund indices had gains in April. The Technology Index was up 1.91 per cent,
Conquest Capital’s Conquest STAR UCITS Fund, a systematic absolute return trading strategy, has launched on ML Capital’s MontLake UCITS Platform.
MontLake is an independent platform for UCITS funds that provides investors with access to a range of liquid, transparent and regulated investment products domiciled in Dublin.
Conquest STAR is a pure alpha, short-term systematic trading strategy. The programme has been designed to capture independent alpha from short-term trading opportunities regardless of the risk environment in both “risk-seeking” and “risk-averse” regimes. The fund uses four sub-strategies employing dozens of models to dynamically allocate risk based on the Conquest Risk
The demand for infrastructure funds remains evidently strong. Last year, these vehicles raised USD62.9 billion in aggregate based on figures provided by Preqin*. In Q1 2017, that number had already reached USD29.5 billion; nearly twice the amount raised in Q1 2016 (USD16 billion).
“We’ve seen increasing interest in infrastructure deals, both listed and unlisted,” states Michael McCabe (pictured), Head of US Sales, MUFG Investor Services, the global asset servicing arm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. “The number of deals in Q1 2017 for the US totalled USD50 billion and was fairly concentrated in the energy sector; natural resources, utilities, power
Infrastructure has become a key area of focus for institutional investors as they look to diversify their fixed income portfolios to access longer term, resilient credit opportunities for income-like returns. Within this asset class, infrastructure debt is on the rise as investment managers look to construct new debt vehicles: either to provide direct lending to infrastructure operators, to access well-established municipal bond markets, or to structure their own private lending programmes by issuing tranches of unlisted bonds.
Last September, Schroders established a new infrastructure finance capability designed specifically to help institutional investors access the asset class.
Commenting on infrastructure finance
Maitland, the global advisory and fund administration firm, has acquired Edinburgh based R&H Fund Services Limited from Jersey-based fund administrator R&H Fund Services (Jersey) Limited.
The move is the latest chapter of a period of global expansion for Maitland, following the acquisition of UK-based Phoenix Fund Services and the opening of offices in Miami and New York.
R&H’s Edinburgh office is primarily focused on the investment trust sector and currently service eight funds, representing a total assets under administration of approximately GBP2 billion (bringing Maitland’s total AuA worldwide to over GBP220 billion).
The deal will allow the
FAB Partners, a global alternative investment platform, has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in Halkin Asset Management, a London-based alternative asset manager.
The combined company will be rebranded as Centricus and will continue to target returns across all asset classes, sectors and geographies for its investors.
Halkin is a London-based FCA-regulated and SEC registered multi-manager platform, offering portfolio management and advisory services. It provides complete solutions to early stage and established portfolio managers.
The transaction will support the expansion of Halkin’s onshore asset management capabilities, as well as its corporate finance advisory business.
The
The top hedge funds managed approximately USD159 billion in equity holdings in the first quarter of 2017, an increase from the USD153 billion under management in Q4 2016, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence’s latest Hedge Fund Tracker analysis.
The total number of equity positions held also increased from 424 in Q4 to 427 in Q1, as hedge funds made a significant move into the consumer staples sector.
The quarterly S&P Global Market Intelligence Hedge Fund Tracker, which reviews 13F filings by pure play hedge funds, provides an aggregate analysis of hedge fund equity ownership that highlights hedge
Institutional trading network Liquidnet has acquired OTAS Technologies – an analytics platform that delivers actionable market intelligence and context directly to institutional traders and portfolio managers.
OTAS’s analytics and market insight, combined with Liquidnet’s Virtual High Touch decision-support trading platform, will help enhance the buy-side trader’s decision making process and give the trader more control over achieving best execution.
“The biggest challenges we hear from our buy-side Members today centre on two things – finding the liquidity they need, and being able to sort through vast amounts of market information to access what’s relevant,” says Rob Laible, Liquidnet’s
New York-based hedge fund firm Gondor Capital Management has outperformed its much larger peers in the first four months of 2017 with strong gains.
Vincent Au, portfolio manager at Gondor Capital, says its domestic Gondor Partners LP gained 8.32 per cent through April (+0.36 per cent MTD, while its offshore Gondor Funds LTD generated a strong 7.75 per cent per cent returns during the same period (+0.43 per cent MTD).
The solid performances of Gondor’s two funds outshines their much bigger counterparts as the average hedge funds returned less than half of what they generated in the first
