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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Alternative investor Ansher Holding Limited, which is focused on investments in Central Asia and the Caucasus, has reported their equity long/short hedge fund is up 13% YTD.
“Central Asia and the Caucasus region have emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing regions and has shown notable development potential,” says Pascal Buschor, Executive Director and member of the investment committee, “The region is rich in oil, gas, cotton and gold with reasonable infrastructure and human capital and a strategic location between Asia and Europe. The diversified economies of most Central Asian countries show also very attractive valuations in the banking, insurance, food processing and telecommunication sectors.”
Anshers 2 hedge funds have a rather narrow regional focus to invest across Central Asian and the Caucasus’ equity and property markets, the Ansher Regional Property Fund (ARPF) and Ansher Regional Equity Fund (AREF). The funds have shown strong performance since launch, in 2006 showing a positive return of +34.2%, 2007: +33.1%, 2008: +13%, for the equity fund, and +8.6%, for the newly launched real estate fund.
With a low correlation to main markets and strong links in the area, including political, the investment objective of AREF is to take advantage of high yield and relatively undervalued assets in fast-growing industries such as oil & gas, mining, energy, financial institutions, and consumer goods sectors in order to achieve long term capital appreciation primarily through an actively managed portfolio of securities and assets in the Region.
Endowed with world class natural resources, the Region is experiencing strong economic growth and attracting billions of dollars in foreign investments, Ansher says in its monthly report, expecting also to benefit from great deal of spill over effect of oil & gas and mining industries on other sectors of the economy.
Ansher Fund Management is the asset management arm of Ansher Holding Limited. Founded 1998, the company has managed number of successful funds dedicated to emerging markets of the CIS as well as Turkey and Mongolia. Ansher FM has managed three different funds with consolidated AUM of $80 million with mandates of investing in the equity markets, property markets and private equity opportunities.
This exceptional performance is attributable to being the only regional focused family of funds with physical presence of the team in the region Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Dubai (UAE), Zurich (Switzerland). The team of Ansher FM consists of 10 investment professionals as well as 4 back office employees to cover the region.
Domiciled in the Cayman Islands, Ansher has a 2% management fee, a 20% performance fee with a 8% hurdle rate and a minimum investment of $100.000.
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Financial Standard- DWS Investments could well be one of the pioneers of a new era in hedge funds when it launched a new product that offers daily liquidity and pricing to retail investors.
DWS Investments, Deutsche Bank’s global retail asset management arm, last week launched the DWS Strategic Value Fund (Enhanced Liquidity) – a product designed to give exposure to an actively managed, multi-strategy, fund-of-hedge funds.
According to Jody Fitzgerald, investment specialist at DWS Investments, the underlying DWS Strategic Value Fund will face no changes to its operations or strategy as a direct result of the heightened liquidity.
“The liquidity is being synthetically organised outside the fund. The Strategic Value Fund is the underlying product, and sitting outside the fund are investment certificates issued by Deutsche Bank. These certificates are the ones that will provide the liquidity," said Fitzgerald.
Hedge Funds Review Magazine- In early 2007 HNWIs bet heavily on riskier asset classes. However further into the year, financial market turmoil and economic uncertainty intensified and HNWIs began to shift their investments to safer, less volatile asset classes.
Exposure to property and hedge funds was reduced in favour of safer investments, according to the “World Wealth Report” from Merrill Lynch and CapGemini.
An increasing proportion of hedge fund assets are coming from institutional investors instead of wealthy clients. This is shifting the main drivers of the industry’s growth.
“This year’s report found that the number of high net worth individuals, and the amount of wealth they control, continued to increase in 2007, with the greatest wealth being created in the emerging markets of India, China, and Brazil,” said Nick Tucker, market leader for the UK and Ireland, global wealth management arm at Merrill Lynch.
HedgeWeek – TriAlpha, the asset management arm of the Stonehage Group, an international wealth management group, has launched the TriAlpha Global Property Strategy Fund, a fund of property hedge funds.
The fund seeks absolute returns by focusing on hedge fund managers that specialise in the global property sector. The portfolio will include property hedge funds from prominent management firms such as Credit Suisse, Thames River Capital and New Star Asset Management.
‘With increasing uncertainty and volatility in the property sector, a fund of hedge funds approach to this asset class looks extremely favourable,’ says TriAlpha director Cobus Kruger. ‘The easy money has been made – given this volatility it’s now time for the skills of hedge fund managers to be employed.’
TriAlpha has a 10-year track record in managing funds of hedge funds, and through Stonehage Property Partners the group has extensive experience in property investment.
‘Using a fund of funds approach allows us to exploit opportunities across global property markets with an absolute return focus through the full property cycle,’ says Sean Curry, head of TriAlpha’s fund of hedge funds team.
Reuters- More merger and acquisition activity among fund firms is likely as the industry faces up to a tough 2008, said Mark McCombe, head of HSBC’s asset management arm, which is to rebrand next month.
McCombe, chief executive of what will be known as HSBC Global Asset Management and include the firm’s hedge fund, quantitative, liquidity and multi-manager arms, said the funds industry had had a tough time over the past year and faced further difficulties this year.
"You had this almost perfect storm situation, where liquidity dried up, dislocation, added to which you then built in volatility … I think you can say this year will be a difficult year for all asset managers and for differing reasons," he said in a recent interview.
