Funds
The Neuberger Berman Large Cap Value Fund institutional class generated a 28.48 per cent return for the 2016 calendar year, ranking in the first percentile of Morningstar's Large Value Category (out of 1,268 funds), and outperforming the Russell 1000 Value Index by over 1,100 basis points.
The fund's institutional class returns were 7.87 per cent for the three years and 14.11 per cent for five years ended 31 December 2016 placing it in the 27th (out of 1,088 funds) and 26th (out of 934 funds) percentiles respectively.
Eli Salzmann, the fund's portfolio manager, uses a value-investing discipline with a
Old Mutual Global Investors (OMGI), part of Old Mutual Wealth, has launched the Old Mutual Systematic Positive Skew Fund, targeting sophisticated institutional investors.
The Irish-domiciled Qualified Investor Alternative Investment Fund (QIAIF) is the latest alternative launch from OMGI addressing the demands of institutional investors for funds offering uncorrelated absolute returns, designed to counterbalance the severe volatility within equity and bond markets.
OMGI currently manages over USD8.7 billion in the liquid alternatives space.
The launch is designed to meet the demand from sophisticated investors for a higher volatility alternative strategy that complements OMGI’s existing range.
The long/short fund
BT has signed an agreement to acquire IP Trade, a provider of unified communications and collaboration solutions for trading floor environments and command-and-control dispatch centres.
Completion of the deal is subject to certain conditions, including regulatory clearance, and is expected to complete in the first quarter of 2017.
The acquisition is underpinned by BT’s Cloud of Clouds portfolio strategy and underlines its continued investment in voice trading and turret solutions.
BT says customers will benefit from optimised cost of ownership, flexible cloud-based deployment options and operational agility, and will be better able to meet demanding regulatory compliance obligations,
Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) has launched the CBOE S&P 500 Range-Bound Premium Income Index, which is designed to serve as a benchmark for investors aiming for consistent income distributions while taking the view that short-term equity returns will be range-bound.
The CBOE S&P 500 Range-Bound Premium Income Index measures the performance of a hypothetical portfolio of short-term Treasury bills and exchange-traded Flexible Exchange (FLEX) options based on the S&P 500 Index (SPX). The index strategy is designed to deliver consistent monthly income distributions that have low correlations to returns from US domestic fixed-income markets and are neutral to the
Castlewood Select Funds’ flagship portfolio, The Castlewood Select Opportunity Fund, returned 13.5 per cent to investors net of fees and expenses in 2016.
“We are very pleased with the portfolio’s 2016 performance,” says managing partner Mark Wittenstein (pictured). “The fund’s return marks a second consecutive double-digit growth year as it follows our 16 per cent net return in 2015 and demonstrates the consistency of performance for which we aim.”
Wittenstein says that the strength of the market’s advance since election day was something of a surprise.
“Stocks continue to confound investors, particularly those who called for a steep
Assets held by hedge funds globally reached a record USD3.22 trillion as of the end of November 2016, according to Preqin’s 2017 Global Hedge Fund Report.
Investor outflows through the year totalled USD102 billion, and at the end of the year, a record 66 per cent of hedge fund investors said their hedge fund portfolios had fallen short of their expectations.
However, 2016 also marked the best performance year for the industry since 2013, posting gains of 7.40 per cent. This offset net investor outflows to drive total industry AUM past USD3.2 trillion, a record high.
Hedge funds
Nasdaq has reported record fourth quarter 2016 net revenues of USD599 million, up USD63 million or 12 per cent from USD536 million in the prior year period, driven primarily by a USD54 million positive impact from acquisitions.
Organic growth in non-trading segments was 5 per cent as compared to the fourth quarter of 2015.
"As Nasdaq's new CEO, I'm excited to have the privilege to lead one of the best businesses in the world as we pursue our mission to help our clients more efficiently and effectively navigate the global capital markets," says Adena Friedman (pictured), president and CEO,
The volume of European restructurings is expected to hit its next peak in 2017, according to a survey by Debtwire in conjunction with independent investment bank Greenhill and law firm Orrick.
The study, for Debtwire Europe’s 13th European Distressed Debt Market Outlook, canvassed the opinion of 130 European hedge fund managers, distressed debt investors and private equity professionals and provides insight into their expectations for the European distressed debt market in 2017 and beyond.
“2016 proved to be another challenging year for the restructuring community, mostly as a result of a continued slim pipeline of workouts and distressed opportunities,”
Lombard Odier Investment Managers has expanded its alternatives range with the launch of the 1798 Event Convexity Strategy, as part of its initiative to offer structurally convex strategies that have asymmetric risk/return profiles.
The launch, with over USD100 million of committed capital, follows the launch of the 1798 Credit Convexity Strategy in early November 2016.
The 1798 Event Convexity Strategy, managed by Christophe Thomas, portfolio manager, focuses on building deeply asymmetric risk profiles around events using intra-capital structure dislocations. The investment approach enhances traditional fundamental event driven analysis with the convexity available from the combination of equities, credit and
PortfolioScience, a provider of on-demand risk management systems, has launched a Factor Index Construction Toolset via the company's RiskAPI Enterprise platform, which allows users to dynamically construct factor indices based on dozens of fundamental, technical and statistical metrics.
In addition to several highly customisable index construction methodologies, the system also provides detailed index constituent quantile analysis, allowing users to inspect and understand constituent behaviour and contribution to construction, valuation, and historical performance.
"The RiskAPI factor index toolset allows users to fully control the valuation and construction process of factor indexes critical to exposure analysis," says Ittai Korin, PortfolioScience's founder
