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ACTIVIST INVESTING
TCI Fund Management, Sir Christopher Hohn’s high-profile activist hedge fund firm, is calling on Canadian National Railway to end its “reckless, irresponsible, and value destructive pursuit” of Kansas City Southern, and wants to requisition a special meeting of CN shareholders aimed at overhauling the board and replacing its CEO.
TCI, which has been a shareholder in CN since 2018, last week increased its holdings to more than 5 per cent of the shares outstanding, valued at USD4 billion.
TCI said on Tuesday it has retained shareholder advisory firm Kingsdale Advisors to offer strategic advice, assist in engaging with shareholders, and,
FUND PERFORMANCE
Brummer & Partners’ flagship multi-strategy vehicle slipped into the red during August, with all but two of its underlying managers posting losses during the month. The slide comes as the Stockholm-based fund began allocating capital to Kersley Financials, a new financials-focused long/short equity strategy, on 1 September.
Overall, Brummer Multi-Strategy fell 1.1 per cent last month, a loss which dragged down its year-to-date performance to -0.9 per cent. The twice-levered Brummer Multi-Strategy 2xL version meanwhile gave back 2.4 per cent in August, leaving it down 2.4 per cent overall since the start of 2021.
Long/short equity funds Black-and-White and Manticore proved
AWARDS
The fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic continues to reshape the global macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape, driving both uncertainty as well as opportunity for macro managers – and the Best Macro Hedge Fund category at this year’s Hedgeweek Americas Awards will honour those managers who have successfully steered their strategies through the assortment of rapidly-evolving macro trends.
Macro hedge funds bet on broader macroeconomic trends and themes by trading a range of markets and indices, going long and short across equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities, among others.
The strategy has traditionally been home to many of the hedge fund industry’s best-known
COMMODITIES
Insch Kintore, the currency and gold-focused CTA hedge fund run by ex-AHL director Christopher Cruden, remains up this year as the precious metal continues on its rollercoaster ride.
PARTNER FEATURE
Stephen Kenny (pictured) from Blick Rothenberg’s Financial Services team reviews HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) recent announcement on moving the accounting year end for unincorporated businesses.
FUND LAUNCH
Geneva Capital Partners, a European high-yield credit-focused family office founded by former RBS principal strategies head Steven Behr, is opening up to outside money.
Established by Behr as a family office in 2013, GCP runs a long/short high-yield opportunistic strategy trading corporate credit. The London-based firm currently has USD18.7 million in assets under management.
The firm takes a bottom-up, research-driven approach to credit investing, running a highly-diversified portfolio comprising 55 positions across Europe.
Behr’s decision to come out of retirement to manage external capital follows several years of strong performance for GCP’s strategy. The fund has outperformed its benchmark with
FUND PERFORMANCE
Hedge funds’ returns more than doubled from Q1 to Q2, as commodities-focused managers powered ahead on the back of the spring oil price surge, and larger funds’ gains outweighed smaller funds’ performance, new analysis by hedge fund asset administrator Citco shows.
Hedge funds’ weighted average returns swelled from 2.75 per cent in the first three months of 2021 to some 6 per cent between April and June, according to Citco Fund Services’ latest ‘2021 Q2 Hedge Fund Report’.
More hedge funds ended the second quarter in positive territory, with 82 per cent of managers scoring a positive annual return in
ALLOCATIONS
Investors are adding more money into hedge funds this year than they are pulling out – but new industry data points to continued dispersion across the strategy spectrum, with managed futures funds attracting new capital while macro and long/short equities managers suffer sharp outflows.
FUND LAUNCHES
Franklin Templeton is growing its liquid alternative fund range with the launch of two new strategies – the Franklin K2 Cat Bond UCITS Fund and Franklin K2 Athena Risk Premia UCITS Fund – to capitalise on “growing demand” for liquid UCITs structures.
The Franklin K2 Cat Bond fund will trade a portfolio of natural catastrophe bonds with a view to generating attractive risk-adjusted returns and compelling current income with limited correlation to other asset classes.
The fund is managed by Jonathan Malawer (pictured), K2 Advisors’ New York-based managing director, head of insurance-linked securities, commodities and environmental Strategies. Malawer, who joined
INVESTMENTS
“Dig deeper”: Why Syz Capital is looking beyond hedge funds and private equity in hunt for uncorrelated returns
INVESTMENTS
“Dig deeper”: Why Syz Capital is looking beyond hedge funds and private equity in hunt for uncorrelated returns