Alternative Market Briefing

Still no exodus of British hedge fund managers in sight

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

From the Opalesque team:

Still no exodus of British hedge fund managers in sight, claimed Swiss daily paper Le Temps yesterday.

Only a handful so far have made a move, among them, Bluegold, CQS Asset Management, Tiresias Capital in collaboration with Omni Partners, and the American fund firm Arrowhawk Capital Partners. According the Swiss Funds Association, between 10 and 20 hedge funds from various origins have come to settle in the last 24 months.

Most have opened a satellite office with 2 or 3 people – sometimes a few more – usually including a marketer who is in charge of relations with investors, a lot of them being based in Switzerland.

However, neither of the large fund houses BlueCrest Capital Management or Brevan Howard has yet opened the Swiss office they said they would open. Both said they planned to move around 20% of their staff to Geneva.

Others, such as Emergent Asset Management and Odey Asset Management, have looked into moving but have not reached a decision, apparently. They are two of many to do this. Palladio Alternative Research in Geneva confirmed that the biggest hedge fund houses are indeed the ones who make enquiries. A company in Lausanne, which has received 30 enquiries, said there is also marked interest from smaller independent funds.

April will determine whether the tax increase will spur hedge funds to move out of the UK, the paper concludes.

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