FUND MANAGEMENT NEWS
NEW MERGER ARBITRAGE FUND
PineBridge investments has launched a new merger arbitrage fund designed to profit from investing in publicly announced merger and acquisition transactions. The UCITS III compliant fund is managed by Lan Cai, who has 15 years of experience in investing in equities and derivatives. Ms Cai has managed PineBridge’s merger arbitrage strategy for institutional clients since 2002, generating positive performance for eight years. It is also relatively uncorrelated with equity and bond markets and is not very volatile.
ABERDEEN LATIN AMERICAN FUND
Aberdeen Asset Management is to unveil a version of its Global Latin America fund to be domiciled in the UK. A version of the fund domiciled in Luxembourg already exists. Devan Kaloo, head of global emerging markets at Aberdeen, will be taking charge of the fund, which plans to pick Latin American stocks according to strict quality criteria. Over the last three years, the fund has generated 4.28 per cent, narrowly underperforming its benchmark of 4.42 per cent.
NEW FRONTIER MARKETS FUND
Schroders has launched a Luxembourg-domiciled frontiers market equity fund for Alan Conway and Rami Sidani. The Sicav structured ISF frontier markets equity fund will be benchmarked against the MSCI frontiers market index, which is weighted 60 per cent towards the Middle East. The fund is to invest heavily in Kuwait and Qatar, as well as other countries such as Nigeria, Argentina and Pakistan. It is to be dollar denominated with plans to launch a euro version in the future.
INVESCO PERPETUAL ASIAN FUND
Invesco Perpetual will be launching a new Asian equity income fund on 7 March of this year. The fund aims to generate both income and also long term capital growth by investing in shares in Asia and Australasia, excluding Japan. The fund will be managed by Stuart Parks and Tim Dickson and is an addition to Invesco Perpetual’s existing Asian equity franchise. The fund management team will target a dividend yield of 120 per cent of the MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex-Japan index.