Henderson Global Investors has this month launched two hedge funds, the European Style Rotational Fund to exploit market inefficiencies in style investing and the Global Currency Absolute Return Fund. These latest fund launches grow Henderson's expanding hedge fund platform to 11 funds with almost $2 billion under management.
The launch of the European Style Rotational strategy adds a new pillar to Henderson's hedge fund business. It will seek to capture alpha from a proprietary quant driven investment process. The process exploits the inefficiencies of style investing in a systematic way and profits from trend reversals and rapid style shifts.
The Fund benefits from unconstrained sector and country exposures to allow high conviction style positions to be taken. Individual positions are decided on the basis of the alpha score of each equity. The alpha score will be calculated for each stock and is
derived from the individual ratings of each stock on all the styles in the model. Each style's direction is determined by the output of the Style Signals Model.
The Fund will target an underlying volatility of 8 12% and will be managed by investment specialists David Bint and Steve Danby, directors of Global Sectors & Themes.
The Global Currency Absolute Return Fund is a discretionary, technically driven fund that aims to provide a competitive absolute return with low volatility by taking tightly risk-controlled short-term currency positions.
The Currency Absolute Return Fund will be managed by Jim Bonner, director of fixed income. Mr Bonner has been trading the currency markets for 15 years at Henderson. He has been running the currency component of the Global Fixed Income Absolute Return fund since 2003. His style is based purely on technical analysis and his trades tend to be short term in nature. A strong emphasis is placed on risk control with stop losses being set on all trades at position opening to ensure portfolio losses are minimised.
Both funds will be marketed to institutions, fund of hedge funds, private banks, high net worth individuals and family offices.
Commenting on the expansion of the hedge fund business, Kate O'Neill, Henderson's Director of Hedge Funds, said: "These latest funds are a significant step in the successful expansion of our range of hedge fund products. The equity long short style rotational strategy has created a high level of interest given its innovative investment process and we believe it will generate demonstrable alpha through returns uncorrelated with the equity market.
"Our global currency absolute return fund adds to our fixed income stable of funds, offering steady capital growth with controlled volatility. Both funds are managed by an experienced team with a solid track record that we believe will generate additional added value for investors by continuing to outperform over the longer term."
Source: Henderson
