Small, but beautiful - Canadian hedge funds

Date: Thursday, October 4, 2012
Author: Albourne Village

Over the last five years, the assets of Canadian hedge funds grew from $12 billion to $30 billion. Given the times we are in, that's a nice growth rate. Currently, 48 hedge funds and fund of funds are members of AIMA Canada, the Alternative Investment Management Association. While $30 billion is still small compared to other hedge fund centers, the industry has become quite diversified in terms of strategies, and many top service providers are active in the country.

The hedge fund managers at this Opalesque Canada Roundtable make their point that they also deliver. For example, Donville Kent has outperformed the TSX Composite every year since launch in 2008; cumulative return since inception is a gain of 132% versus a loss of 1% for the TSX Composite. The 25 page Roundtable script can be downloaded here for free: www.opalesque.com/RT/CanadaRoundtable2012.html

What do Canadian individual and institutional investors want?

Since the 1990s, the majority of private Canadian investors has not made any money with the typical Canadian long-only asset managers, and there is a clear desire for change. The Roundtable highlights a number of ways hedge funds can now capitalize on the mass disillusionment amongst this investor class.

Institutional investors in Canada are finally beginning to appreciate the need for alternatives as complements to their traditional assets. The smaller institutions are most likely to outsource their needs, while larger institutions would only consider outsourcing to gain access to a very specialized strategy, while always giving preference to developing new strategies in-house.

The Opalesque 2012 Canada Roundtable was sponsored by Kaufman Rossin Fund Services and Eurex and took place in the offices of Deloitte in Toronto, Canada on September 12th with:

1. Veronika Hirsch, Chief Investment Officer BluMont Capital 2. Frank Maeba, Co-Founder, Breton Hill Capital 3. Jordan Zinberg, Managing Director and Portfolio Manager, Donville Kent 4. Chris Dopp, Senior Vice President, Eurex 5. Darcy Morris, Co-Founder. Ewing Morris Investment Partners 6. Ari Shiff, President and Founder, Inflection Management 7. Prof. Luis A. Seco, Sigma Analysis and Management; Director, Mathematical Finance Program, University of Toronto

Discussing:

• Where do Canadian hedge funds find opportunities? Which strategies are still working? • Insights into the Canadian equity market: how to evaluate energy companies, and how to invest beyond energy • Small is beautiful: In contrast to other regions, the scalability of Canadian hedge funds is not in question • How to get seeded by CalPERS • Why hedge funds will cope better with the regulatory push for increased capital requirements and collateral than traditional firms • Strong outlook for activist investing: Driven by hedge funds and international investors, shareholder activism in Canada is on the rise

The 25 page Roundtable script can be downloaded here for free: www.opalesque.com/RT/CanadaRoundtable2012.html

The Opalesque Roundtable Series highlights fundamental developments within the global hedge fund and alternative investment industry, a full archive with over 80 Roundtable scripts can be accessed here: www.opalesque.com/Archive-Roundtable.html.

About Opalesque

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