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The new fund will launch at the end of July following the launch of Mike Corcell’s RWC US Absolute Alpha fund, which has raised over $400m since its launch in October 2009.

RWC Europe Absolute Alpha Fund will be managed using Gambhir's successful and long-running European long/short investment strategy, while the UCITS III structure brings the additional benefit of daily liquidity and share classes that will have local registrations in a number of European countries.

Gambhir, who started managing European long/short funds in 2003, joined RWC Partners from JPMorgan Asset Management in 2007 and launched his Cayman-domiciled Europe hedge fund in September. Since launch in 2003 Gambhir's investment strategy has produced annualised returns of more than 13.1% against the MSCI Europe equity index having annualised returns of just 3.7% over the same period. The strategy has achieved this with volatility of only 7.9%, less than half that of the index (16.0%).

At JPMorgan Asset Management Gambhir was responsible for $6bn of assets in the high alpha European Dynamic funds, having managed the UK Dynamic, Europe Dynamic and Europe Dynamic Long Short funds from their inceptions. Gambhir was AAA-rated by Citywire and his funds were AAA-rated by OBSR, AA-rated by Standard & Poor’s and Micropal 5 star rated.

RWC Europe Absolute Alpha aims to make significant returns over a market cycle of at least 10-15% per annum. The long short approach aims to offer the benefit of positively compounding returns by limiting drawdowns in bear markets.

Commenting on the new fund, Peter Harrison, CEO, RWC Partners, said: “UCITS III absolute return funds are generating a huge amount of investor interest but most of them don’t yet have long track records. Ajay has been managing long/short equity funds for seven years, and through protracted bull and bear phases his approach has shone out. He is one of the few fund managers in the European long/short space that has a proven track record, so investors will know what they can expect from our new fund. At JPMorgan he returned approximately 105% in a bull market, over the three years to end 2006, against the MSCI Europe Equity index which returned 93%. He launched the same strategy at RWC Partners just two weeks before the bear market began in October 2007 - over the period the fund has returned more than 7% compared to the MSCI Equity index which is down over 30%.

“Ajay first launched unconstrained UCITS III funds in 2000. Over the seven years that he managed the three “Dynamic” (UK and Europe) funds at JPMorgan, the funds were top decile against their peer group in each discrete year. He saw the opportunity to extend the flexibility of his approach with the launch of long/short funds in 2003 and since then has demonstrated the ability to perform well in a variety of market conditions."

The firm currently manages substantial assets in UCITS III funds and recently announced that the highly regarded Nick Purves and Ian Lance will join the company in August 2010 from Schroders to launch a range of income funds. The launch of RWC Europe Absolute Alpha will sit alongside the other RWC UCITS III funds: RWC US Absolute Alpha; RWC Advance Absolute Alpha Fund; and RWC Global Convertibles Fund.

RWC Partners is an independent asset manager with six distinct investment teams. The firm bridges the gap between traditional and alternative managers and manages a range of UCITS III funds alongside its offshore funds and institutional mandates. www.rwcpartners.com

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