Swiss Private Bank Opens Hedge Fund To Outside

Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Author: FINalternatives

Swiss private bank Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch is more than 200 years old, a fact it advertises in its newest product: a hedge fund.

1798 Global Partners—named for the year in which Lombard Odier was founded—is the firm’s first hedge fund, seeded in November with US$350 million. Now, the firm has begun marketing the fund to outside investors, hoping to increase its assets under management to US$1 billion within the next 12 months, Financial News reports.

Lombard Odier managing partner Hubert Keller has been named CEO of 1798, while Aziz Nahas serves as chief investment officer. Nahas formerly served as global head of equities at Dillon Read Capital Management, the now-defunct UBS hedge fund.

The fund is based in New York, with 20 employees. In addition to Keller and Nahas, the fund has hired Martin Fisch, formerly of Deutsche Bank, to manage 1798’s convertible bond portfolio. He will move to Geneva after this summer, when the hedge fund expands to Switzerland.