By Tomoko Yamazaki and Komaki Ito
Sept. 3 (Bloomberg) -- OGI Capital Partners Ltd., a Japanese hedge fund with 3.5 billion yen ($40 million) in assets, plans to almost double in size by starting a global macro hedge fund to be run by Allan Bedwick, a former proprietary trader at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
The OGI Global Macro Fund will start this month with seed money from an overseas institutional investor of 3 billion yen and wager on stocks, bonds and currencies globally with a focus in Asia, said Naoya Takahashi, OGI’s head of fund management.
The global macro fund will be the third fund offered by OGI this year, after the firm started a Japan-focused long-short equity fund and a Japanese long-only stock fund in July. OGI joins Sparx Group Co., Asia’s biggest hedge fund, in offering a global macro fund as demand for the strategy rises in a market short of similar offerings after global hedge funds had their worst year on record in 2008.
“In the wake of the global credit crisis, we expected to see some money flowing back to the industry this year, especially from the fund of funds that had increased their cash positions,” Takahashi, 47, said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. “We wanted to capture that opportunity.”
Bedwick joined Tokyo-based OGI on Aug. 1, Takahashi said. He previously ran global macro trading within the Global Opportunities Group at Lehman Brothers Principal Investments, and the operation after its takeover by Nomura Holdings Inc.
Ex-Nicolas Edwards
OGI Capital was set up in March this year with the recruitment of a six-member team including Takahashi from Tokyo- based Nicolas Edwards Investments K.K., which closed its Japan- focused hedge fund at the end of December. The OGI group has private-equity and venture capital investments that existed before starting the hedge-fund investment business.
The Cayman Island-based OGI Global Macro Fund will have maximum capacity of about 60 billion yen and about two-thirds of its investments will be made in the Asia-Pacific region, Takahashi said. Bedwick has more than 20 years of experience in the region, Takahashi said.
“In the current global economic landscape, you cannot rule out the significance of Asia,” he said. “Having an Asia-focus will also mean lower correlation with other global macro funds that are mostly run out of the U.S. or Europe.”
There are currently five global macro funds, a strategy employed by George Soros’s Quantum Fund, that are run by Japanese firms, compared with 200 in the U.S. and 160 in Europe, according to Eurekahedge Pte.
Global Macro Demand
The planned closure of Asia Genesis Asset Management Pte’s Japan Macro Fund as founder Chua Soon Hock retires is also creating opportunities for macro funds, Takahashi said. The $761 million Japan Macro Fund, which began in 2000, will return funds to investors this month after yielding 23.6 percent so far this year, and 11 percent in 2008, according to Chua.
Tokyo-based Sparx opened its first global macro fund, Sparx Global Markets Fund, to new investors this month after starting it with the firm’s own capital of 900 million yen on Aug. 12.
Managers of global macro hedge funds returned 3.3 percent in 2008, when the industry posted an 11 percent drop in its worst year on record, according to Eurekahedge. The strategy has returned 9.2 percent so far this year through August, compared with a 13 percent advance by the Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index.
Long-Short Fund
OGI Japan Long Short Equity Offshore Trust fund started on July 1 with the firm’s own money of 2 billion yen. It employs a so-called long short strategy, betting on rising and falling stock prices. In a short sale, a trader borrows stock and sells it in the hopes it can be bought back later at a cheaper price.
The fund returned 1 percent in July and was almost flat in August on a preliminary basis, according to Takahashi. Prior to the start, the fund lost 4.7 percent from April 2008 based on simulation of its own strategy, outperforming a 22 percent drop by the benchmark Topix index in the same period.
It sees shorting opportunities in companies reliant on capital spending because there has been little improvement in this area, even as economists estimate in the world’s second- largest economy has already hit bottom, Takahashi said.
The OGI Japan Deep Value Offshore Trust fund also started on July 1 with 500 million yen of the firm’s money. The long- only fund, investing in small to micro-cap Japanese stocks, returned 0.5 percent in its first month. The fund, with capacity to grow to 20 billion yen, is targeting pension funds and high- net-worth individuals, he said.
Hedge funds are private, largely unregulated pools of capital whose managers can buy or sell any assets, bet on falling as well as rising asset prices, and participate substantially in profits from money invested.
To contact the reporters on this story: Tomoko Yamazaki in Tokyo at tyamazaki@bloomberg.net; Komaki Ito in Tokyo at kito@bloomberg.net
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment