Reuters – Fund manager Gartmore is preparing a major push into the UK retail hedge fund market after picking up strong demand for its first products in the sector, a senior executive said.

The plan comes after a rough year for hedge funds worldwide, and following steep outflows from Gartmore’s own institutional funds, but advisory Board member Phil Wagstaff is convinced demand from retail investors is on the rise.

"The hedge fund world and the UK retail world will collide – we see this as a core area for us going forward and we see this as a growth area for the industry," Wagstaff, who is also head of global distribution at the firm, told Reuters.

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Tags: advisory board member, core area, gartmore, global-distribution, institutional funds, retail investors, retail world, reuters, wagstaff

Asian Investor – The Shaka Japan fund has been launched in New York by hedge fund manager Shaka Capital Management. It is a new start-up, launched in January of this year with partners’ capital, and has an estimated capacity of $1 billion.

Arif Imam is Shaka’s business manager and is a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, responsible for global distribution of Japanese equities.

The portfolio manager is Alexandre de Bethmann who formerly worked at Federated Global and TIAA-CREF.

Shaka’s trader is Douglas Butcher, who was also a managing director at Morgan Stanley where he handled client trading for Japanese equities.

Target return is 12-15% per year on a Sharpe Ratio of 1.2 to 1.5. It is a Japan-only long/short equity fund concentrating on the top 250 stocks in that market. The focus on large-cap stocks is in part because of the very liquid state of the short borrow that lends to running a truly efficient hedged fund.

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