London-based UCITS manager has no fear of Brexit

Guillaume Touze

A former Barclays executive talks about starting a UCITS boutique in London, investing in emerging market debt, and the impact of Brexit on his funds. Before founding Quadra Capital, French-born manager Guillaume Touze spent most of his career with the Barclays Group, which he joined in the 90s. He ended up running Barclay's asset management business in Europe. As the firm launched its first UCITS in 1998, around the start of the Euro currency, much of his experience lies in managing UCITS.

In 2010, a number of friends within the asset management and insurance industries told him they wanted to invest in hedge funds, but would prefer a boutique that supplied vehicles with much more liquidity. Liquidity was not exactly what hedge funds normally offered back then.

"The idea stayed in my mind," he tells Opalesque. "When Barclays became less exciting in 2013, we talked about building something that would be a slightly unusual animal, with several institutional investors at the beginning, that would go the UCITS route to provide liquid alternatives to the European investor base, with a vehicle out of Luxembourg that would be flexible and useable for everyone." And Touze did just that: exploit the niche that differentiates from hedge funds' typical offshore domiciles and illiquid terms.

"We hoped to create the best of both world, i.e., the agility of the boutique combined with the institutional setup," he adds. At the time of creating the firm in 2014, he and his partners were entering their forties. When he told a friend about it, the friend suggested the name "Quadra Capital." He later became a client.

"Rather than using the initials of my four children, I decided to use that name. I also liked the idea that the name of t......................

To view our full article please login

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