—Robert Murray
Griffin Capital Management, the London and Gibraltar firm focused on European long-only and long/short equity strategies, is registering its funds in Switzerland in an attempt to boost its prominence with investors there.
Nina Hook-Zurlino, head of marketing, told AIN the firm has applied to register the Griffin Umbrella Fund, a Dublin-domiciled structure which incorporates three of the firm’s funds. These are the flagship Griffin Eastern European Opportunities Fund, the Griffin European Opportunities Fund—a Ucits offering which recently absorbed the Griffin European Hedge Fund (totalalternatives.com, April 27)—and the Griffin Ottoman Fund, a long-only strategy focused on Turkey, Russia and the MENA region.
Registering the funds in Switzerland should make them easier to sell to sophisticated Swiss investors, said Hook-Zurlino. She noted that Switzerland is a market in which “open fund architecture is not just talked about, but actually applied.” Griffin aims for the funds to be registered by the end of the summer.
Hook-Zurlino said that Swiss investors account for a small percentage of the firm’s $440 million under management, but that this percentage is growing. Roughly 80% of assets are from investors in German-speaking Europe.
This article was originally published in Alternative Investment News.