Gottex Fund Management Holdings Limited (Gottex) has reported strong fund performance during the final three months of 2011. The company’s flagship market neutral strategies are two to three per cent ahead of their benchmarks, while Gottex’s alternative credit strategy and Constellar multistrategies returned respectively +3.8% and +3.4% for the year.
Total fee earning assets for the group stood at USD 7.34 billion as as 31 December 2011, a decrease of 10% compared to USD 8.16 billion at 30 September 2011, as a result of net client outflows and impact from foreign exchange and technical factors.
Gottex expects its 2011 Annual Results to show a small operating profit, but, after taking into consideration financial items and investments, an expected small net loss when reported in March (subject to audit and final review).
Joachim Gottschalk, Chairman and CEO, says: “The global uncertainty in financial markets that started in the summer of 2011 did not really abate in the fourth quarter with uncertainty about the Euro, the global economic recovery, the sovereign debt crisis and China’s economy at the forefront. Against this backdrop, we are pleased that our flagship market neutral strategies have shown a strong relative performance for the year returning nearly flat results versus the overall hedge fund market which lost around 5%2. Impressively, our alternative credit strategy and our Constellar multistrategy product generated positive returns during 2011 of respectively +3.8% and +3.4%, which puts both strategies in the top quartile of fund of hedge funds tables for the year. As mentioned at the third quarter, investor appetite remains low and asset flows remain slow.
We do expect that it will take some time for the uncertainties facing global financial markets to work through and for the related volatility to diminish. “We are pleased to announce that we launched the US onshore RIC version of our Multi Asset Endowment Fund, which has resulted in the first inflows for this product in January of this year. The product is particularly well suited to implement the ‘Outsourced CIO’ concept, which is seeing growing interest amongst small- and mid-sized institutional investors in the US.”
