Industry Updates

Innocap IM adds Castlestone’s Porcupine Global Macro hedge fund to its managed account platform

Friday, February 05, 2010

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Opalesque Industry Update – Castlestone Management, an independent fund manager with offices in London and New York, announced yesterday that Innocap Investment Management, which has around $1.93bn in asset under advisory, had added the Porcupine Global Macro hedge fund to its hedge fund managed account platform on 1-Feb-10.

Porcupine Global Macro Plus, a hedge fund managed by Angus Murray and Leon Diamond, aims for consistent risk-adjusted returns and capital preservation with an emphasis on risk control. The fund uses an investment process that is 100% discretionary and takes both directional and relative value positions using futures and forwards in the G10 markets within four major asset classes: equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities. The fund returned +14.43% in 2008 and +7.12% in 2009.

Angus Murray, founder of Castlestone said: “The disciplined investment process we use for Porcupine Global Macro Plus has meant we have been able to deliver consistent returns during extremely challenging economic times. We are delighted this has been recognized and accepted by Innocap and that these benefits can now be directly accessed by their client base.”

During 2009, there was lot of buzz around managed accounts, which claimed to increase transparency into hedge fund investments. Last summer, Martin Gagnon, co-CEO of Innocap told Opalesque. "We have never seen as many due diligence requests as we did during the months of May, June, and July." "The demand for managed accounts is not diminishing," he added.

Instead of establishing in-house teams to handle these managed accounts, many of the largest institutions are choosing to place assets through already established platforms. This is mainly due to the extensive operational infrastructure required to build a managed account platform from the ground up (see Opalesque Exclusive here).

In April-09, Castlestone Management launched the world’s first retail art investment fund. The firm also announced in Oct-08 that Friends Provident International has added the Aliquot Commodity (UCITS) Fund and the Aliquot Agriculture (UCITS) Fund to its fund range, following strong demand from investors for access to this market.

Castlestone Management, a privately owned independent fund manager specialising in alternative assets, was founded in December 1996, initially as a family office, by Angus Murray, a former president of Macquarie Bank (USA) and co head of the international equity department of NatWest Markets USA.

Innocap Investment Management Inc. offers hedge fund managed account solutions using a conservative approach to hedge fund investing with a strong emphasis on transparency, asset control and effective risk management. The firm is owned by a joint venture between National Bank of Canada and BNP Paribas and National Bank of Canada (Global) Ltd. Innocap charges investors only 50bps. It has offices in Montreal, Paris, London and Tokyo. – SC & BG –

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