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Perspectives of the UCITS Platforms

According to Paul Holmes, Head of Fund Distribution at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the investor demand has increased for equity or risk orientated funds in recent quarters. They believe that this demand is consistent with the somewhat more positive macro backdrop. Also activity in the Event-Driven space is moving forward on the back of a pick up in corporate activity. Finally Paul Holmes sees the search for yield is still very real - with huge interest in a newly launched Diversified Credit fund. They also confirmed that multi-strategy space - which saw the largest flows for us last year still continues to attract interest.

In early April, ML Capital launched a survey of 49 investors investing in $19bn in Alternative UCITS. Results show 65% to increase allocations to Global Emerging Markets and 51% wanted to increase in Global Long Short Equity. “Sentiment has been very clear; investors have begun to make a big return to equities and intend to continue to do so in the coming quarter” states John Lowry, Chairman of ML Capital.

Morgan Stanley confirms the appetite for Equity Long/Short with sector specialists or with directional views and volatility. Credit is in fashion and CTA and Macro are seen as less in demand.

According to Lyxor, the ongoing normalisation of markets observed during Q1 2013 has created a favourable environment for CTAs after a challenging year in 2012. In particular, the better trading environment with the return of trends combined with the decrease of correlations between asset classes is proving helpful. Moreover, Lyxor notes that investors continue to search for attractive and stable yield in a low-rate environment. In this field, the event driven space is offering investment opportunities and especially in the credit market, where the expertise and the experience of the manager are critical to deliver alpha.