Y-Intercept, a Hong Kong-based quantitative manager backed by Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, has raised more than $1.7bn for its first fund open to external investors, marking one of the largest hedge fund capital raises in Asia in recent years, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The report cites unnamed people familiar with the matter as revealing that the new vehicle attracted commitments from allocators across Asia, the Middle East and North America, including several sovereign wealth funds, pension plans and global asset managers. Investors are said to include Blackstone, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Morgan Stanley’s fund-of-funds arm, though all declined to comment.
Founded seven years ago, Y-Intercept has until now run capital exclusively for Schonfeld, which has invested more than $1bn with the manager and will remain the sole investor in the firm’s core product. The new fund represents Y-Intercept’s first step into the broader institutional hedge fund market.
Led by former Credit Suisse and Société Générale quant traders Dale Lee and James Park, with Paul Kim as CEO, Y-Intercept runs a statistical arbitrage platform trading global equities and related instruments. The new fund will expand the remit to include macro strategies, giving the manager flexibility to trade across equity, rates, FX and commodity markets as volatility and dispersion rise.
