Industry Updates

Largest European hedge fund group Brevan Howard to open office in Sao Paulo

Monday, September 20, 2010

Tweet
Print
Email
Track Keywords

Opalesque Industry Update - We have just heard that Brevan Howard Asset Management will open an office in São Paulo, Brazil, to further broaden its global footprint, which includes offices in Europe, the United States and Asia.

The LatAm office will be headed by Mário Mesquita, formerly a Deputy Governor of the Brazilian Central Bank (2006-2010).

Brevan Howard, which manages the famed LSE-listed BH Macro fund, has seen much progress this year.

The firm had to shut down its first UCITS-compliant absolute return bond fund in March after it failed to gain interest from investors. The head of absolute return strategies Philippe Lespinard left in April, one in a string of departures from the firm’s Ucits business. And the head of investor relations James Morrison, left the firm the following month.

But, according to Financial News, the firm has recently picked internal traders to oversee a new Ucits-compliant emerging markets foreign exchange and rates fund, which it launched earlier this month with about $110m.

Brevan Howard launched another new fund; the $200m energy and commodities fund, Commodities Strategies Master Fund Ltd., was launched in March and started accepting outside investors in May.

In June this year, $25.3bn Brevan Howard remained the biggest European hedge fund firm, closely followed by $21.7bn Man and $16.6bn BlueCrest Capital Management, according to EuroHedge data.

Alan Howard, co-founder of Brevan Howard, moved to Geneva in June, joining two other traders. He saw his personal fortune more than double last year (to £875m (€1bn)) according to the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List published in April.

Six more traders were reportedly expected to relocate later this year.

Brevan’s BH Macro Ltd. fund has climbed about 1.15% this year (to end-June), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The $25bn Master Fund is down by around 2% (to end-July), after returning about 18% in 2009 and 20% in 2008.

It was also reported that all 45 partners at Brevan Howard had shared a bumper payout of £86.1m ($134.3m) at the height of the financial crisis. – B. Gravrand.

See our June-2010 Opalesque Exclusive: Opportunities remain for investors to access high quality listed hedge funds at discount to NAV Source

Also, Ian Plenderleith, chairman of BH Macro, participated in the Opalesque London 2010 roundtable: Source

Article link