MONACO (Reuters) – Former Insight Investment fund managers Patrick Armstrong and Ana Cukic-Armstrong have launched a new fund management business that will invest in a broad range of assets and seek to beat inflation.

The firm, Armstrong Investment Managers, will try to combine hedge fund-style flexibility with the liquidity and lower fees of traditional asset management. It will launch funds for retail, high net worth and pension fund investors at the end of the summer, Patrick Armstrong told Reuters on Tuesday.

The pair were co-heads of the multi-asset group at Insight Investment, now owned by Lloyds Banking Group. They ran around 1.2 billion pounds in assets including the Diversified Target Return fund, which over the past three years fell 2 percent, beating an average 11 percent fall among peer funds.

"We think there is a middle ground between traditional funds and hedge funds," Armstrong said. "Hedge funds have been opaque, illiquid and had very high charges."

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Tags: asset group, asset-management, assets, banking-group, flexibility, fund investors, fund management business, hedge fund, inflation, insight, investment fund managers, investment managers, liquidity, lloyds, monaco, net worth, patrick armstrong, pension-fund, reuters, target return

Times Online – Fairfield Greenwich, the hedge fund manager founded by socialite Walter Noel, became the first fund that invested with disgraced fund manager Bernard Madoff to be charged with fraud.

William Galvin, Massachusett’s Secretary of State, today accused the Connecticut-based fund of lying to investors about it due diligence it did on Madoff’s fund management business.

Fairfield Greenwich was one of the biggest feeder funds to Madoff, enabling the 70-year-old convicted swindler to rip off thousands of people in a $65 billion Ponzi scheme running for at least 20 years.

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Tags: connecticut, due diligence, fairfield greenwich, feeder, fraud, fund management business, hedge-fund-manager, investors, massachusett, secretary of state, swindler, walter noel, william-galvin