Altis Partners, the $1.3 billion Jersey CTA firm, is planning to open an office in either Hong Kong or, more likely, Singapore by the end of the year. Georgia Nakou, head of business development, told AIN that the new office will not be a one-man outpost but "something more heavyweight," staffed with investor relations and marketing professionals, operations staff and, later, research hires.
This will be Altis' first push to attract money from Asian investors. The firm has some Japanese clients, but they account for only a small proportion of assets, said Nakou. Investors in the region "want to see a commitment" from a manager before they invest, so a team on the ground is likely to make for an easier sell, she explained.
Altis' systematic Global Futures Portfolio returned 51.91% last year. It has recently been ranked sixth in the Barron's Hedge Fund 100 list--which measures three-year annualised returns--and 14th in Bloomberg's rating of the best-performing hedge funds. As with many CTAs, the fund met with a tough start to 2009 and is down 4.62% this year to the end of May.
Most of the firm's clients are large U.S. and European wire houses, which tend to make stable, long-term allocations and are described by Nakou as "the usual suspects in the CTA industry." She declined to go into detail about how Altis intends to target Asian investors, saying it was premature.
Last year's numbers have attracted a lot of interest from other investors, notably family offices that would previously have gone through intermediaries. These investors are now seeking direct interaction with the underlying manager, and Nakou put this sea change down to "lack of faith in the banking sector and the failure of the fund of funds model over the last year or so."
Altis' team of four investor relations staff are struggling to keep on top of discussions with potential investors, so the firm is likely to staff up in this area, she said. Altis also plans to make its first push for assets from institutional investors including pension funds and endowments, but the firm is unlikely to see inflows from these slower-moving investors any time soon, said Nakou.
--Robert Murray
This article was originally published in Alternative Investment News.