Alternative Market Briefing

Big seed firms make a push for emerging managers

Thursday, March 31, 2011

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Patric de Gentile-Williams From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York:

As hedge fund allocations have risen over the past few months, the few large seed firms left post-crisis have begun making a push for the emerging managers they have seeded and continue to hunt for more. Blackstone Group recently announced that $355m has been raised from investors for its new seed fund the Strategic Alliance Fund II. And FRM Capital Advisors (FCA) says an event it held last week presenting managers the firm has seeded to potential investors saw a turnout so successful that at 80 investors it was double what the firm had expected.

"There is increasing investor interest in emerging managers. And people are not only looking but are allocating to emerging managers in 2011," FCA Chief Operating Officer Patric de Gentile-Williams told Opalesque.

It is that last point that is the significant change over 2010, when at year-end the hedge fund industry started to finally see more launches taking place, but with much smaller assets under management targets and announcements of seed capital infusions running few and far between.

Aside from the typical advantages that de Gentile-Williams says seed investors maintain (ie, incremental returns, increased interaction with managers, greater transparency, etc), there has been a change in the pedigree of many emerging managers, where post the financial crisis shakeout, these managers have a tendency to bring a greater breadth and depth of financi......................

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