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Multi-class asset manager La Française has signed a strategic partnership – pending regulatory approval – with Alger Management (Alger).
La Française will take a 49.9% interest in Alger, an affiliate of Fred Alger Management, a US asset management firm. Two executives of La Française will sit on the newly appointed five member Board of Alger.
This alliance offers a unique opportunity to create synergies in distribution, market development, and product diversification. La Française, through its European network and with the support of its majority shareholder, Credit Mutuel Nord Europe, will provide distribution capabilities and acceleration capital, and Fred Alger
Quantmetrics Capital Management is to join Lyxor’s AIFM MAP launching the first AIFMD-compliant strategy on the managed account platform.
Quantmetrics’ investment strategy will be a short-term CTA program invested in all asset classes that seeks to combine behavioural insights with quantitative analysis to capture alpha. It aims to exploit small and temporary price discrepancies in financial markets in the US, Europe and Asia by pursuing a short-term systematic trading of futures and spot FX positions.
In 2015, as the environment for CTAs has significantly improved, this strategy could be a strong diversifier to deliver positive and uncorrelated returns to
Hedge funds started the year slightly down, but managed to out-perform the S&P 500 for the month of January, according to eVestment’s January 2015 Hedge Fund Performance Report.
While aggregate hedge fund performance was down slightly at -0.03%, hedge funds managed to beat the S&P 500 in January by 297 basis points, the most since January 2014.
Managed futures funds gained 3.04% in January and have returned 9.07% in the past six months.
Large managed futures funds – those with AUM above USD1 billion – continued to perform strongly with returns of nearly 6% in January and more than 16%
CLSA Americas (CLSAA) has integrated the IEX Alternative Trading System (ATS) and Smart Order Router (SOR) across its Electronic Execution algorithms.
This gives clients the option to use the IEX SOR for accessing displayed liquidity across all lit markets as well as the IEX pool when trading via the electronic, high touch or program trading desks. Since adopting the IEX SOR, CLSAA has been a Top 3 user of their Smart Order Router.
“As a full service agency broker, we seek to provide clients with a choice of tailored execution options. IEX fits well within our model of transparency and
The vote by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on 27 November 2014 to not reduce oil production levels was widely publicized and had a significant effect on managed futures and CTAs throughout Q4 2014, particularly on funds with a focus on trading oil. Throughout this period, the Brent Crude Oil price index fell by nearly 40%, from $94.80 at the close of September to $57.55 on 31 December. It is clear that the volatility of this commodity provided opportunities for funds implementing short strategies but exposed those unable to navigate the market.
As the chart below illustrates,
Lionpoint Group has launched a new service to help alternative investments clients address manager and investor requirements for greater transparency of underlying portfolio companies and investment holdings.
Primary services include process optimisation, operational efficiency improvements and the implementation of enabling technologies to support the collection, validation, normalisation, performance reporting and analytics associated with underlying holdings in Private Capital, with a focus on Private Equity, Real Estate and Infrastructure. Offerings also include support with risk and compliance monitoring as well as Portfolio Company and underlying investment valuations.
While remaining product agnostic, the Lionpoint Group team has solution expertise with products including AssetEye,
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC) Global Markets Entity Identifier (GMEI) utility, offered in collaboration with SWIFT, has issued over 165,000 legal entity identifiers (LEIs) to entities from over 140 jurisdictions, representing approximately 50% share of the LEIs issued worldwide.
With this progress, DTCC and SWIFT have played a significant role in the growth of the Global LEI System (GLEIS) and are key partners with the Global LEI Foundation (GLEIF), which was created last year to help manage the overall system.
The GMEI utility is expected to continue to grow in the coming years as regulators increasingly mandate
Candriam Investors Group, the pan-European multi-asset manager, has appointment Matthieu David as Head of Candriam Investors Group Italy.
David will report directly to Renato Guerriero, Global Head of European Client Relations, who recently was appointed Member of the Executive Committee.
David will be responsible for Candriam’s business development strategy in Italy in order to leverage Candriam’s proprietary platform and investment expertise. In addition to consolidating Candriam’s presence in the pension fund and institutional mandates sector, Matthieu David will lead the company’s growth in asset management and distribution. David leads a team of four sales managers and will coordinate local
Man GLG, the discretionary investment management business of Man Group (Man), has appointed Himanshu Gulati as Head of US Distressed Credit, based in New York.
Gulati, who joins from Perry Capital, the US hedge fund business, will manage a new distressed investment strategy which Man GLG plans to launch later this year.
Gulati, a specialist in distressed and special situations investing, joins Man GLG after almost nine years at Perry Capital where he was a Managing Partner responsible for Distressed Credit and Special Situations investments. Prior to Perry Capital, Gulati worked at Rockview Capital, a credit focused fund. In
Armstrong Investment Managers (AIM) has appointed Cenk Aydin as Managing Director for MENA to expand AIM’s international network into Turkey and the Middle East.
Cenk, who is British-Turkish joins AIM from JP Morgan where he was Head of Corporate Segment for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He previously worked as Chief Operating Officer for the Global Transaction Services Business of Bank of America EMEA. Over the course of his career he has undersigned major deals totalling up to USD100bn.
Cenk currently serves on President's Advisory Group of the EastWest Institute, a New York based think-tank and is Vice Chairman of
