Tuesday June 14, 2016 www.bloombergbriefs.com Noctua Starts Latin America-Focused Credit Fund QUOTE OF THE WEEK BY HEMA PARMAR Noctua Partners, the $650 million emerging markets-focused firm, has started a new "The problem is demand, is credit fund focused on Latin America. The Emerging Markets Credit Opportunities Fund spending. ... We don’t have started trading on June 1 with $50 million in assets, according to CEO Martin Guyot. enough growth around the The fund invests across emerging markets with a focus on Latin America, Guyot said. world and I think with fiscal It looks for arbitrage opportunities within the event-driven space and also those QE you could actually get prompted by dislocations in corporate bond prices and liquidity. The fund bets around volatility in emerging-market sovereign bonds, prompted by more demand.” lower commodity prices and political developments, Guyot said. "In corporates, we see — Blackstone Group LP's Tom Hill in an a lack of secondary market liquidity creating attractive opportunities," he said. Guyot interview on Bloomberg TV also said he sees long-short opportunities as "the diversity of corporates’ balance sheets has some more prepared than others to handle declining profitability and funding INSIDE availability." Large redemptions from long-only funds in general have created forced Aurora redemptions said to have selling and dislocations in emerging-market sovereign and corporate bonds, he said. derailed takeover by 50 South Latin America offers opportunities for relative-value bets as spreads on bonds in Brazil Capital: Redemptions and Argentina, are "attractive" compared to those in Mexico and Colombia, Guyot said. "There are a number of corporate and quasi-sovereign issuances that we believe Kingdon Capital trimmed its loss for currently offer an attractive premium to their relative sovereign. Thus, we are looking for the year with a gain in May: Returns these spreads to compress, offering attractive capital appreciation for the fund," he said. For directional bets, the fund prefers Argentina as sovereign and corporate bond yield Ex-Soros duo Rogers and Donfeld curves in South America’s second-largest economy have begun to normalize and the take their team to start a fund with new issue market for corporate and provincial debt continues to grow. In December, Druckenmiller cash: On the Move former Noctua Partners portfolio manager Luis Caputo was appointed Argentina's secretary of finance under it's new president Mauricio Macri. Waratah Energy is bullish on Devon Two large institutional investors and some private individuals have invested in the Energy: Market Calls fund, which will be managed by Ricardo Navarro, Guyot said, declining to give investor specifics. Navarro joined Noctua this month after six years at Itau Unibanco Holding. A BNY Mellon survey found that Emerging markets-focused hedge funds fell 0.5 percent last month and are up 1.1 hedge funds are the least favored percent this year through May, according to Hedge Fund Research. Hedge funds on alternative asset class: Research average are up 0.7 percent year-to-date and 0.4 percent in May, the data provider said. Latin American hedge funds, which still lead emerging markets in year-to-date gains, K2 Advisors' Robert Christian says averaged a 3.4 percent loss in May, cutting year-to-date returns to 10.8 percent, it said. managers are looking to liquid alts to The firm also has a $110 million Argentina fund that is up 12.5 percent this year access new clients: Spotlight through May, and manages a $72 million macro fund that has gained 6.4 percent in that time period, according to investor letters obtained by Bloomberg. L/S Equity: Liquid Alts vs. Hedge Funds BY MELISSA KARSH Long-short equity liquid alternative funds rose 1.2 percent in May versus a 0.8 percent gain for long-short equity hedge funds in the same month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. On a monthly basis, long-short equity hedge funds outperformed liquid alternatives running the same strategy in nine out of 17 months from January 2015-May 2016, but experienced more volatility, according to Bloomberg Data analyst Sean Casey. Since January 2015, long-short equity liquid alts on average outperformed long-short equity hedge funds, gaining 2.6 percent versus 0.4 percent, respectively. The data consists of 237 global open-end funds that utilize a long-short equity strategy, and more than 700 long-short equity hedge funds. For more from Bloomberg Data, run HFND on your terminal. RETURNS IN BRIEF June 14, 2016 Bloomberg Brief Hedge Funds 2 RETURNS IN BRIEF A look at hedge fund performance last month. Funds in the table below not mentioned in the accompanying text on this page were reported in other issues of the Brief or in Bloomberg News stories. For questions, e-mail [email protected]. Kingdon Capital Management’s $1.7 May Returns billion global long-short equity fund gained 5.2 percent in May, cutting its loss for the first five months of the year to 3.2 percent, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Kingdon’s $345 million Credit Master Fund was up 2.6 percent last month, bringing year-to-date returns to 2.6 percent, the person said. A spokesman for Mark Kingdon’s $2.2 billion firm declined to comment. — Hema Parmar Winton Capital Management’s $12.8 billion Futures Fund lost 3.9 percent through May 31 after gaining almost 1 percent in 2015, said a spokesman for the firm. The London-based managed futures fund is run by David Harding, who founded Winton in 1997. Funds trading a managed futures strategy averaged losses in March, April and May, Year-to-Date to End-May Returns wiping out combined gains of 7.2 percent posted in the first two months of the year, according to Societe Generale SA’s index, which tracks the performance of the 20 largest CTAs globally that provide daily returns and are open to new investment. It lost 0.3 percent in the first five months of 2016 after rising by 0.03 percent in 2015. — Will Wainewright REDEMPTIONS June 14, 2016 Bloomberg Brief Hedge Funds 3 REDEMPTIONS Aurora Redemptions Said to Have Derailed Takeover by 50 South Capital BY HEMA PARMAR to tell clients it would wind down and underlying managers. The number of The planned acquisition of Aurora return all capital, to avoid that remaining fund of funds around the world declined Investment Management by 50 South investors would be hurt by the to 1,616 at the end of the first quarter Capital Advisors collapsed because redemptions, one of the people said. The from 2,462 in 2007, according to Hedge Aurora clients had asked to pull money surprise decision by one of Chicago’s Fund Research Inc. after the deal was announced, according notable hedge fund investors highlights 50 South wasn’t the only suitor for to four people with knowledge of the the difficulties of the fund-of-funds Aurora. Mesirow Financial — which matter. business as declining assets force the manages $30.5 billion, including almost The deal required that a certain industry to consolidate. $12 billion in hedge funds — was also in percentage of its $5.4 billion in assets “Allocation to the fund of hedge fund talks to purchase the firm before the stay with the firm after the merger, said industry has declined, which has made it agreement with 50 South was struck, one the people. When that condition wasn’t more difficult to maintain scale,” said Ted of the people said. Both 50 South and met the deal was terminated, according Meyer, a spokesman for Natixis Global Mesirow are also based in Chicago. to the people. The decision was mutually Asset Management, Aurora's parent Debbie Krieps, a spokeswoman for agreed upon by both parties, said John company. Mesirow, declined to comment. O'Connell, spokesman for Northern Trust Funds of hedge funds have struggled While Aurora winds down, at least one Corp., of which 50 South is the $5 billion to attract assets as investors voice member of its senior team may spin out alternative-investment unit. concerns over paying a layer of fees to to start a new firm that will seed The failed merger eventually led Aurora the middlemen on top of those charged emerging managers, one of the people by the said. ON THE MOVE June 14, 2016 Bloomberg Brief Hedge Funds 4 ON THE MOVE Ex-Soros Duo to Start Fund With Druckenmiller Cash Levinson’s Fund Hires Ex- David Rogers and Joshua Donfeld, who left their jobs as money managers at Soros BlueCrest's McNiff Fund Management last month, are bringing most of their team to start a fund with a Adam Levinson’s $4.5 billion macro substantial anchor investment from Stan Druckenmiller, according to people with hedge fund, Graticule Asset knowledge of the matter. Management, has hired former The investment from Druckenmiller, who trained Rogers at his former hedge fund BlueCrest Capital Management’s John Duquesne Capital Management, will be his biggest after the $1 billion he gave another McNiff in New York to invest in credit protege, Zach Schreiber, to help start PointState Capital in 2011, said the people. markets, a person with knowledge of the Rogers and Donfeld are planning to start Castle Hook Partners in the fourth quarter of matter said. this year. Rogers is “extremely talented and he did a great job when he worked for me,” McNiff is starting at the firm on Druckenmiller said in an April interview. Thursday, said the person. The The pair are bringing seven members of their team, and has gotten help from Singapore-based company was spun out billionaire George Soros’s family office to keep the group intact, said one of the people.