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Alternative UCITS funds experienced a 16 per cent growth in AUM in 2017, with total assets exceeding USD522 billion according to LuxHedge, an alternative UCITS index provider. Over that period, a record 248 new funds launched and the sense was that investor sentiment remained upbeat.
However, if one assesses 2018, there are indications that this level of growth will be difficult to replicate with one data source, Kepler Partners, suggesting that industry AUM has only increased by 1 per cent from Q317 to Q318 (quite a contrast to the 20+ per cent annualised growth rate witnessed over the last nine
The days of managers setting up new long-only large-cap US equity UCITS are largely gone, according to Philip Lovegrove, partner in law firm Matheson’s Asset Management Department. “Products are getting more complex and one of the manifestations of this is that for a number of years now, we have been seeing a lot of strategies and instruments that have traditionally belonged in the hedge fund world being brought into the UCITS world,” says Lovegrove.
This assumes the strategy fits the regime, however. Indeed, sometimes the biggest constraint on UCITS can be the ‘eligible assets’ rules. These rules forbid UCITS from
Back in February 2018, Goldman Sachs’ Securities Division, announced that it was partnering with Amundi with regards to its Luxembourgish funds based on the bank’s proprietary systematic strategy suite as well as to help support and expand its alternative UCITS offering. Amundi will take on the role as management company of the whole fund range and in addition become the investment manager for the proprietary systematic UCITS and SIF platforms.
Much was made of the announcement, with some in the media looking for ulterior motives; was this a regulatory response of some sort? Was this a sign that Goldman Sachs
Man Group has launched the Man Group RI Fund Framework, a formalised structure that quantifies the degree of RI focus for all Man Group funds, and the Man Group RI Exclusions List, a proprietary list of sectors and companies ineligible for the company’s portfolios.
These developments follow the recent formalisation of Man Group’s RI team, which is overseen by Sandy Rattray (pictured), Chief Investment Officer of Man Group, with ongoing activity led by Steven Desmyter and Jason Mitchell as Co-Heads of Responsible Investment.
The new RI Fund Framework is designed to establish a baseline requirement of ESG standards, and
Vaultex is to employ Cinnober’s TRADExpress Trading System and TRADExpress RealTime Clearing for its new Singapore-based security token and tokenised asset exchange for institutional investors, hedge funds and other eligible market participants.
The new exchange will leverage Cinnober’s established trading and clearing systems, which will provide the resilient and reliable technological backbone needed to operate an advanced marketplace.
“Cinnober was a clear choice for Vaultex, in our quest to build a highly scalable, efficient and modern electronic exchange, they stood out from other solution providers,” says Jeffrey Premer, CEO of Vaultex. “Their experienced team and world-class technologies proven by traditional
The Supervisory Board of the European Energy Exchange (EEX) appointed Jens Rick as member of the Management Board. As of 1 February 2019, Rick will assume the newly created position of the Chief Information Officer.
Rick is an experienced manager and entrepreneur. He joined Deutsche Börse in August 2015. As Director Energy IT, he manages the design, the development and the operation of trading systems of the M7 product family including sales and customer management. In previous engagements, Jens founded and managed software and consulting companies in the financial sector, also with a focus on data management.
“With the addition of
The Capzanine Situations Spéciales fund is providing financial and strategic support to Legal, the leading independent French coffee roaster.
Affected by a fire in 2016, Legal had to meet medium-term financing needs to finish the modernisation of its industrial tooling and continue its development.
After working in close collaboration with the management and the shareholders to clearly understand Legal’s financial and strategic issues, Capzanine intervened to set up a EUR5.4 million, five-year bond financing in order to enable the company to finalise its investments and support its growth approach.
Capzanine was particularly convinced by the involvement and agility of the
Following a difficult October, CTAs continued to face challenges in November, with the SG CTA Index was down 1.09 per cent and the SG Trend Index down 1.75 per cent.
However, the SG Trend Indicator outperformed the Trend Index as it was up 2.51 per cent. This was driven by gains in commodity markets especially from short positions in the energy sector.
Apart from the uplift in commodities, trend following strategies struggled in other sectors with losses in currencies and equities. There were strong reversals against established trends in particular in Australian and New Zealand Dollar. Furthermore, trends in
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has partnered with Xceptor, a specialist in data-centric intelligent automation software, to enable clients to leverage Xceptor’s data transformation capabilities within DTCC’s Global Trade Repository (GTR) for Securities Financing Transactions Regulation (SFTR).
The partnership is aiming to lessen the operational burden for firms’ by enabling them to enrich, normalise and validate data before submitting it to a trade repository. Firms will be able to enrich reporting with both internal and external reference data, manage exceptions leveraging native workflows, and benefit from real-time gap analysis and testing.
“With data being one of the
The average Alternative UCITS fund is continuing to have a difficult time in terms of performance in 2018, with the LuxHedge Global Alternative UCITS Index posting a loss of 0.59 per cent in November, bringing YTD results down to -3.64 per cent.
Dispersion in this space remains very large with the best performing fund returning 35 per cent this year and the worst performer down -28 per cent. A bit less than 20 per cent of funds in our index universe are able to still show positive YTD results.
Assets under Management in the overall universe have declined 2.5 per
