Borealis Strategic Capital grows out of Aurora

Scott Schweighauser, formerly president of Chicago-based asset manager Aurora Investment Management, is now launching Borealis Strategic Capital Partners, Chicago Business.

Borealis is seeking to provide seed capital to hedge fund managers in the early stages of building their firms. In exchange, Borealis says on its website that it will ask for "direct economic participation in their growth and success." Schweighauser helped launch a similar $500m seed-capital fund under the Borealis name at Aurora last year, but it made just one investment, according to Hedge Fund Alert.

"When taken together, the shifts in both the demand for and supply of capital for early-stage hedge funds have created a far more favorable environment for seed capital providers today, as compared to five years ago," said Daniel Harris, who was Aurora's head of research and is now at Borealis. "Now, investors with seed capital command a scarce resource with substantially increased value." Swiss investors take fund seeding and acceleration into their own hands

Banque Bonhote, a 200-year old Swiss private bank, last year launched a community of investors - heads of Swiss family and advisory offices and wealth managers - with the aim of co-investing in the kind of managers they wanted to invest in, either by way of seed or as acceleration capital. They created a pool and called it Bonhote Fund Solutions.

Today, this community includes 12 partners, including Bonhoete (Bonhote means "good host"), who regularly share ideas, meet altogether twice a year, and invest in whom they chose. The pool amounts to CHF30bn, and they have a......................

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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.