Artemis Decides to Wind Down Its Absolute Return Hedge Fund

Date: Monday, November 24, 2008
Author: Tom Cahill, Bloomberg

Artemis Asset Management Ltd., the $17 billion money manager controlled by Fortis, said it will shut down the Artemis Absolute Return Hedge Fund managed by William Littlewood, even after posting better returns than most funds.

“It has been determined that the affairs of the fund should be wound up,” Artemis said today in a filing with the Irish Stock Exchange.

Artemis Absolute Return, as a so-called long-short equity fund, made bets on both rising and declining shares. It returned 29 percent through the end of October, ranking in the 98th percentile of 1,816 hedge funds tracked by Bloomberg.

The fund was managed by Littlewood since December 2005, according to Artemis’s Web-site. Littlewood, 43, previously spent more than a decade at Jupiter Asset Management, where managed the Jupiter Income fund before leaving in November 2000. He didn’t respond to calls or e-mails.

Hedge funds are private, largely unregulated pools of capital whose managers can buy or sell any assets and participate substantially in profits from money invested. Since the beginning of the year, more than 75 funds have liquidated, suspended client withdrawals or limited redemptions.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Cahill in London at tcahill@bloomberg.net