Equity Long Short

Athanasios T Ladopoulos, senior partner and senior portfolio manager of Swiss Investment Managers, says the Directors Dealings Fund, which uses a proprietary investment methodology focusing on share transactions by companies’ directors and senior executives, offers sophisticated investors non-correlated returns accompanies by robust risk management techniques. »

Vernon West (pictured), chief executive of USD47m global long/short equity specialist Skyline Capital Management, says the firm, which offers its strategy through Cayman and Ucits vehicles, seeks to tap into emerging market growth resulting from accelerating domestic consumption as productivity improvements boost income per head and increased automation as firms substitute capital for labour. »

Carl Bernadotte, founder of Stockholm-based CB Asset Management, says the four-year-old CB Hedge fund draws on the firm’s existing investment management work and due diligence by selecting stocks from the long-only European Quality Fund, reducing market risk by shorting the MSCI Europe index. »

Carl Meurling, chief executive of Russia and emerging Europe specialist Emeralt Investments, says many investors want exposure to the region with limited and controlled risk, making the firm’s funds a good alternative to long-only products that are completely exposed to market risk. »

Paul Kennedy, managing director and chief investment officer of GWM Group, says investors are looking for funds, such as the firm’s newly-launched long/short European Ucits fund 7H Absolute, that provide low net exposure and generate alpha through a strategic long-term approach and a short-term trading overlay to maximise returns without an increased risk profile. »

Michael Kart, manager of the Spectrum funds at Marshall Spectrum, says the firm’s two equity funds are poised to benefit from expected new equity placements, restructuring of the telecoms industry and continued liberalisation of energy markets in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. »

SAM Capital Partners is looking to expand the investor base of its SAM Capital Equity Opportunity Fund, launched in September 2007, on the back of a run of 13 successive months of positive return. Founder and chief investment officer Dietmar Schmitt says the firm’s approach is being validated by the plans of other groups to launch trading funds with short-term investment horizons. »

Willem de Vlugt and Charles Estourgie, founding partners and fund managers at Amsterdam-based EValuation Capital Management, says the EV Smaller Companies Fund they manage is set to benefit from a favourable environment in the coming year as its core long portfolio of small and medium-sized companies emerge stronger from the crisis. »

Pedro Noronha, managing partner of Noster Capital, says the firm’s proprietary indicators currently say that the green shoots crowd is too early in pricing a V-shaped recovery into the market, and that credit spreads, which have tightened to levels that are in some instances similar to the top of the market bubble, are set again to widen considerably once new problems with European bank lending start to surface. »

Bernard Lambilliotte, chief investment officer of specialist utilities and infrastructure investor Ecofin, says the firm's newly-launched China Pow »