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Akira specializes in commodity derivative investments and uses a discretionary, multi-strategy approach to trade in listed futures and options across all commodity sectors. Headed by Yves Martin, the firm currently has $25 million of assets under management and was named after a climbing wall located in Western France, which was at one point the most difficult natural climbing wall ever successfully climbed.

Yves Martin founded Akira to manage funds for institutional investors and accredited investors with the aim of delivering positive absolute returns by combining a top-down and a bottom-up investment process focused on commodities. Mr. Martin is Akira’s President and a former Vice President for Jefferies Financial Products in Stamford, Connecticut, after spending most of his career at Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of Canada’s largest managers of pension funds.

Also on Akira Management team are Vice President, Investments Hervé Fefer, former commodities portfolio manager at Caisse; Chief Risk Officer Paul Turcotte, also formerly at Caisse; and trader and market Analyst Olivier Tardif-Drolet, former trading analyst on the natural gas desk of BP Integrated Supply and Trading. The four partners will also be looking to launch a second commodity fund for U.S.-based and foreign investors in the first half of 2013.

The Fund joins other Canadian managers (Innocap Casgrain Bond Fund LP, Hexavest GTAA Fund LP, NBCAI Credit Dislocation Fund LP and Innocap Sigma Alpha GM+ Fund LP) on Innocap’s Canadian Limited Partnership Structure which has reached $260 million in assets under management as of November 30th, 2012.

The structure thus now houses five specialized Quebec-based managers with strong portfolio management skills and knowledge of local and international markets. The offering addresses investors' appetite for hedge funds while providing visibility for Quebec and Canadian managers. The Innocap platform provides a risk and asset-controlled environment for investing in hedge funds.

(press release)

About Commodities
According to the recent report by Citigroup, “The New Abnormal: 2013 Commodities Outlook’’, the end of the commodity super-cycle combined with extended periods of negative roll yield will cause investors to shift from simple long-only strategies to more enhanced-beta or alpha-focused commodity strategies. The same report also mentions that “exceptional rewards from tail risk events should continue to make commodities an attractive investment vehicle for a wide array of portfolio managers, as no other asset class provides such an opportunity from wildcards’’.

About Innocap
Innocap, which stands for Innovative Capital, is the result of 16 years of investments in hedge fund strategies with approximately $2.3 billion in assets under advisory as of November 30th, 2012. Innocap acts as the Investment Manager for the Canadian limited partnership structure and as Investment Advisor to Innocap Global Investment Management Ltd, which manages a Malta-domiciled collective investment scheme licensed as a Professional Investor Fund. Innocap offers hedge fund managed account solutions using a conservative approach to hedge fund investing with a strong emphasis on risk management, asset control and transparency. This structure increases control over assets; no money is invested directly in the managers' hedge funds. Created by an institutional investor for institutional investors, Innocap's core values, such as a transparent fee structure and no hidden conflicts of interest, are aligned with the high standards expected in the markets. www.innocap.com

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