New Managers September 2012

Seeders Corner - Investcorp: Institutions can invest in emerging managers through special programs

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Investcorp: Institutions can invest in emerging managers through special programs

Deepak Gurnani

Since 2000, institutional money has been penetrating the hedge fund industry. But since 2088, when a lot of non-institutional money redeemed, most of the hedge fund industry's assets come from institutional sources. Deepak Gurnani, the head of the $5 billion hedge fund business at Investcorp, said during a recent Opalesque TV interview that this is a positive in that it forced the hedge fund industry to focus on risk management and transparency. There is one big concern however coming from this trend, he adds. And that is that most of the institutional money goes to the larger funds. Not that larger hedge funds are bad. But if so much money goes into them, this can lead to "dilution of returns." He authored a paper in 2010 that compared the performance of large funds ($5bn +) and that of new funds (3 years or younger), which are assumed to have less assets.

"We found that over the last seven years, which was the focus period for the study, the emerging funds outperformed the large funds on a risk-adjusted basis. "So, the next logical question was that surely the emerging funds take a lot more risk than large funds and as a result they have outperformed," he explained. "I think what was most interesting was that most of that outperformance came in 2008-2009.

"I would say just 90% plus of the money going into large funds is setting up things for disappointment in the years to come."

Investcorp was set up in 1982 to help investors in the Gulf States invest in companies in the West.It is now an asset manager focused on alterna......................

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This article was published in Opalesque's New Managers a top-down monthly analysis, news and research publication on the global emerging manager space.