MFS Sub To Seed HFs

MFS Investment Management is getting into the hedge fund game, setting up a subsidiary to provide seed capital to hedge funds, Reuters reports. The new subsidiary, Four Pillars Capital Inc., will be run as a separate entity, with MFS providing operations and marketing support to the firm. Thomas Knott, co-founder of hedge fund K Capital Partners, has been named president, while Eric Lass, manager of K Capital’s Credit Opportunities Fund, will serve as chief investment officer. Four Pillars will focus on finding successful hedge fund managers in need of seed capital to build their own firms and on providing expansion capital to smaller hedge funds that want to grow their operations. The Boston-based money manager, which is a unit of Canadian insurer Sun Life Financial Inc., has some $202 billion under management and is just the latest in a string of traditional money managers to get into the alternative investments area. MFS is credited with creating the United States’ first mutual fund in 1924.