The 10 managers are Alphinity, Ardea, Bentham, Five Oceans, Greencape, Kapstream, Kinetic, Merlon, Novaport and WaveStone.  In addition, Fidante will distribute specialist funds offered by Credit Suisse, Howard Mortgage, Orion and SG Hiscock

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Mason Stevens and 2020 Funds Management have merged to become the Mason Stevens Group.  2020 FM will be renamed One Capital Asset Management within the group.   The firm is a boutique fund manager offering a global macro/futures fund and an Australian equities fund.  2020 FM also ran a direct investment distribution business, 2020 DirectInvest.

Thomas Bignill from Mason Stevens will be Managing Director of the group.  Patrick Handley (ex-2020, ex Westpac) will be executive chairman and Vincent Hua (ex-2020, ex CBA) is CIO.   The group’s client base is predominantly from the retail, SMSF and high-net-worth market.

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Hong Kong based Athos Capital, backed by Ascalon, (See Australian Hedge, Jan 2012) is launching an Asia-focussed event driven hedge fund on 6 April, according to Reuters.  The fund will be seeded by Ascalon.

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Canada’s $45 billion AGF Management has opened a Sydney sales office according to I&T News.  It is headed by Lilly Price as business development manager.  The firm will reportedly host 12 Australian superannuation funds in May in New York to present details of its investment strategies.

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UK-based Henderson Global Investors plans to expand in Australia, according to the Australian Financial Review.   The expansion strategy will be co-ordinated by an executive chairman and will involve hiring Sydney-based executives.

Henderson’s CEO Andrew Formica was quoted as saying he expected the firm’s ‘absolute return strategy, or hedge funds and international property funds to be initial contenders for the local markets.’  The firm currently manages around $2.2 billion for Australian investors in direct property, equity mandates and hedge funds.

His Sydney-based firm, MST Capital, will reportedly include UBS executives Jeremy Hooper (ex Morgan Stanley proprietary trader) and Matthew Mulcahy, (ex-PIMCO).  In addition, Mark Levinson, (ex Goldman Sachs Australia managing director) will head investor relations.  The UBS team is due to leave the bank in mid-March.

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Barclays Capital Fund Solutions will launch a global macro-style fund in the second quarter of 2012. The asset manager has raised around $60 million from Australian retail clients in two funds, a long-short commodities fund and a partially capital protected global equities fund.

Barclays Capital Fund Solutions, (GBP18.7 billion AUM) the asset management arm of Barclays Capital, is headed by Caroline Saunders in Australia. It markets its retail funds through an Australian subsidiary; Celsius Investments Australia.

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Treasury Group, a boutique and hedge fund incubator, made a $4.2 million profit in the six months to Dec 31, 2011.  The firm’s nine boutiques have a total of $15.75 billion AuM, up 1.5 percent from a year ago.

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Lanyon Asset Management, a high conviction long-only boutique fund manager, will see its Australian Value Fund listed on retail investment platforms, namely BT Wrap, Macquarie Wrap and MLC Wrap, over the coming months, according to InvestorDaily. Lanyon was launched in July 2010, by David Prescott and MMC Asset Management founder Erik Metanomski.

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Standard Life Investments’ David Millar, the UK-based investment director of multi-asset investing, was recently in Sydney promoting the firm’s absolute return expertise to institutional superfunds.

It’s Global Absolute Return Strategies Trust utilises a multi-asset, multi-strategy approach and was made available to Australian investors in December 2009.  The firm has GBP157 billion AuM and has an Australian office headed by Simone Bouch.

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Connecticut based Zebra Capital Management is seeking to raise as much as $100 million for its first Australian equities fund, according to I&T News.  Zebra offers equity market neutral funds that aim to capture liquidity premium opportunities.  The firm has about US$600 million AuM and was founded in 2001 by Roger Ibbotson.

Canning Parkis a long-short equity manager that invests across 10 Asian markets including Australia and Japan.  It deploys fundamental analysis with a tactical trading overlay to lower volatility.

The firm was founded in July 2010 by Jason Rich, (ex-Bennelong Asset Management, GLS Capital and Goldman Sachs); David Thompson, (ex-Gartmore Investment Management and Morgan Stanley); and James Hyndes, (ex-Goldman Sachs and Macquarie Bank.)

Athos is an event driven manager founded by Matthew Moskey and Erik Senko (both ex-Omni Asia and Centaurus Capital); and Fred Schulte-Hillen, (ex-Black’s Link Capital). The firm plans to launch an event driven fund focusing on the Asia Pacific region.

Ascalon will provide operational, governance and global business development support, as well as capital to both firms.  Ascalon is a 100 percent subsidiary of Westpac.

The move ‘partly reflects the ongoing impact of disruptive technologies on companies and industries, but more importantly, the fundamental change in the economic backdrop,’ according to Caledonia.

The investment company was established in 1992 as a multi-family office for its founders, according to its website.  The firm now manages $2 billion for more than 400 investors.

The review analysed 14 headline products, with three ‘NEW’ ratings on offerings from BNY Mellon, Man AHL, and Taurus. The BlackRock Asset Allocation Alpha Fund and Winton Global Alpha Fund were both rated five stars.

S&P says it is witnessing increased interest in the peer group after managed futures and directional macro products put in good performance during the GFC.

Meanwhile, S&P has reinstated its three star rating on the CFS Wholesale Australian Share Long Short-Core Fund, following the appointment of portfolio manager Wayne Gentle to replace Martin Littler who recently retired from CFS.

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Alternatives fund manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments is seeking to raise $7.5 million as part of an IPO and ASX listing. The IPO will give the company a $33.5m market capitalisation. A net profit after tax of $3.5 million and an estimated yield dividend of 6 per cent is forecasted.

Blue Sky has $180 million AUM and operates four investment management businesses covering Private Equity, Private Real Estate, Hedge Funds and Infrastructure/Commodities.

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Regal Funds Management was recently profiled in the Australian Newspaper. The hedge fund manager currently has over 20 employees and more than $1 billion under management. It recently launched a natural resources fund.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the firm has launched the Regal Asian Quantitative Fund with $25 million in initial capital. It is being managed by Stephen Baldwin.

About 40 percent of AUM in Regalʼs flagship Amazon Market Neutral Fund comes from family offices, 40 percent from institutions including endowments, and the remainder from fund of funds and foundations, according to Bloomberg.

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The ASX will offer quotations and settlement of unlisted Australian managed funds from April 2012. The exchange will use its settlement system in a similar way to managed funds in Europe being quoted via Euroclear and Clearstream, and in the US via the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.

There are around 10,000 managed funds in Australia typically offered by financial planners and stock brokers.

Highlights…

• The Sydney firm has 10 full-time staff, more than $1.5 billion AUM, and a pool of investors that includes HNWIs, private companies, trusts, superannuation funds, selected institutional clients and employees own capital

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nabInvest has taken a non-controlling interest in Redpoint Investment Management, a quantitative-based equities investment management firm based in Sydney.  Redpoint was founded in September 2011 by CEO Tim Batho, formerly of Antares Equities, and CIO Eric Smith, (ex-Vanguard).

Other founders include Nelson Wicas, based in the US (ex-First Quadrant and ex-Vanguard), Peter Ritchie (ex-Barra International) and Ganesh Suntharam (ex-Perpetual).

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Barclays is proposing to change the responsible entity for its Barclays Corals Commodity Fund from Aurora Funds Management to Celsius Investments Australia. Celsius is a subsidiary of Barclays Bank. Unit holders of the fund will vote on the proposal on Nov. 25, 2011.

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Industry Funds Management (IFM) has selected SunGard’s Investran and VPM solutions for operational processing and accounting across all of its investment products and portfolios.

IFM manages over $30 billion across four asset classes: infrastructure, private equity, debt investments and listed equity portfolios. It has offices in Melbourne, Sydney, London and New York and is owned by 32 major Australian superannuation funds

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The AQR Wholesale DELTA Fund has received new Australian/NZ institutional mandates in excess of $150 million over the last three months, including $52 million from Mercer.  AQR now manages more than US$1.4 billion globally in the DELTA strategy, which is a fund of hedge fund that predominantly allocates to AQR affiliated hedge funds.

AQR is a Connecticut-based alternative investment management firm with US$41 billion AUM, of which US$8 billion is sourced from Australian/NZ clients.

Magellan AM is the sole subsidiary of ASX-listed boutique fund manager Magellan Financial Group.  The firm has $2.6 billion under management, comprising $1.1 billion in retail funds and $1.5 billion in wholesale.

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Blue Sky Funds Management has appointed Jane Prior to the newly-created role of commercial manager, according to InvestorDaily.  She was previously at Nabarro, London. Blue Sky manages $200 million in private equity, private real estate, hedge funds and water assets.

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Multi-boutique fund house, Treasury Group, has announced a $10.1 million profit for the financial year ended June 2011.  Funds under management through its underlying boutique funds amounted to $16.7 billion, up 13.9 percent from the previous year.  Nearly 25 percent of AUM is in alternatives with the rest in international and Australian equities.

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Acorn Capital is investigating opportunities to offer an Asia-focussed micro-cap equity fund,
according to the firm’s COO, Douglas Loh, speaking to InvestorDaily.  The Melbourne based boutique fund manager currently offers two micro-caps funds on the Australian equity market.

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ASX-listed absolute return fund manager, K2 Asset Management, has announced a profit of $15.4 million for the 2011 financial year. As at 1 September, 2011, its AUM was $897 million comprising $470 million in its Australian equities fund, $151 million in its Asian equities fund, $234 million in its international fund, and $42 million in other funds.

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Herschel Asset Management has transferred its $20 million Absolute Return Australian Equities Fund to Bennelong Funds Management, according to InvestorDaily.

The transfer was sparked by ex-Herschel fund managers, Mark Burgess and Kristiaan Rehder, (who had been co-managers of the Absolute Return fund) recently forming a new boutique firm, Kardinia Capital, in partnership with Bennelong.  (see Australian Hedge, July 2011).

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AQR Capital Management has been awarded a $60 million mandate from Mercer’s $900 million alternative assets portfolio, according to Financial Standard.  In addition, Intrinsic Investment Management, a long-only Australian equity boutique, has been awarded $600 million from the $4 billion Mercer Australian Core Portfolio. Mercer also allocated $150 million to quantitative asset manager Arrowstreet Capital.

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The largest three hedge funds in Asia are Value Partners (US$8.6 billion); Sparx Group ($8.1 billion); and Hillhouse Capital ($5 billion), according to Institutional Investor’s Annual Ranking of the Biggest Asia-Based Single-Manager Hedge Fund Firms.)

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