New York (HedgeCo.net) – A new hedge fund is being launched to bridge the distance barrier between New Zealand and the rest of the world. Milestone Capital has established the Rutherford Innovation Fund to raise capital and back innovative companies which need financial assistance and business skills to commercialise their ideas on the international stage.

“The Rutherford Innovation Fund provides offshore investors with an experienced local co-investment partner to bridge the geographic gap to New Zealand as these companies are not on the radar of international investors,” Milestone Capital principal Kenji Steven says.

The Rutherford Innovation Fund sees the best opportunities for investment as being those that benefit from the massive changes being driven by the growth of Clean Tech products, services and technologies that provide solutions to urgent global problems around energy, water, carbon and pollution.

The fund is named after Ernest Rutherford, the Kiwi who was the first person to split the atom and the father of modern nuclear physics. It’s a portfolio of private equity companies which include algae fuel manufacturer Aquaflow Bionomic Corporation, carbon sequestration firm Carbonscape and ‘top five’ international climate change website Celsias.

“The key limiting factor in New Zealand is capital. For private companies investment capital is scarce so there is attractive pricing and little competition for deals. The capital markets are also under-developed so approximately 80% of the top 200 New Zealand companies are private,” Steven says. The fund is targeting a capital raising of NZ$50 million over the next two years.

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U.S. News & World Report – Andrew Lo, hedge fund manager and director of MIT’s Laboratory for Financial Engineering, is a long-time student of investor behavior, especially the sort that belies the notion that markets move with cool efficiency. Particularly today, he sees animal spirits lurching about in some worrisome ways that could have long-term consequences for markets and the economy. "The big message is that right now all, of us are in a state of emotional shell-shock," he says. That goes for investors, regulators, bankers, and anyone else unlucky enough to get caught up in the fear and uncertainty flowing through the current financial crisis.

In this two-part Q&A with U.S. News, Prof. Lo discusses the best way to build a robust regulatory system for the financial sector (part one is here.) Below, he considers what massive changes in the investment landscape over the past few years might mean for your investments:

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Tags: amp, animal spirits, efficiency, financial crisis, financial engineering, financial-sector, hedge-fund-manager, investment landscape, investments, investor behavior, long-time, massive changes, notion, regulators, regulatory system, shell shock, term consequences, time student, u s news, uncertainty