New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Former Pacific Investment Management Co. portfolio manager John Brynjolfsson is rumored to be starting his own hedge fund in the near future.  

Ronald Solberg of Viking Asset Management will team up with Brynjolfsson to run Armored Wolf LLC, which will “vary weightings among real asset sectors and securities based on a top-down assessment of the investing environment,” according to the firm’s website.

Prior to venturing out on his own, Brynjolfsson managed the $14.4 billion Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund at Pimco and has been with the firm since 1989.  The Commodity Real Return Strategy Fund employed swap agreements to gain exposure to changes in a broad index of commodity futures prices, using portfolio assets as collateral. 

Brynjolfsson also ran the firm’s $15.5 billion Real Return Fund.  Both funds saw impressive gains in 2007 during a year when many hedge funds were suffering.  

Julie Scuderi
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FINalternatives- Godvig Capital’s Iraq-focused Babylon Fund finished May up 2.7%, bringing its year-to-date gains to 5.2%.

The fund’s portfolio included stakes in hotels, banks and breweries last month, according to portfolio manager Björn Englund, who said he has been solicited to take on board seats but has refrained from doing so.

“Our board policy stays for now, but might have to change in the future,” he said.

Last month, Englund said he continued to slowly add to the portfolio’s Iraq Stock Exchange exposure because of the “sizable inflow” into the fund, and intends to soft close the fund later this year “should assets rise faster than our target.”

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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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