GAM opens next tranche of trading

Global Asset Management (GAM) has launched GAM Trading IV, an offshore multi-manager hedge fund product, and has closed GAM Trading III within five months of launch after it raised $400m.

To date, GAM Trading IV has raised $28m. Like its predecessors, GAM Trading IV aims to achieve absolute returns with low volatility and low correlation to equity and bond markets.

Martin Harrison, director of mutual funds at GAM, said some, but not all, the underlying managers in GAM Trading IV will be the same as that of GAM Trading III.

For example, the top five holdings in GAM Trading IV include Rubicon Global Fund (5.5%), Moore Global Fixed Income Fund (5.4%), PHZ Long Short Equity Fund (3.5%), GLC Gestalt Fund (3.5%) and Smith Barney Stonebrook FX Fund (2.9%).

The top five holdings in GAM Trading III are Moore Global Fixed Income (17.1%), Rubicon Global (14.9%), Grossman Global Macro Hedge Fund (8.3%), GAM Teleos (7.6%) and Smith Barney Stonebrook FX fund (7.4%).

Nancy Skiest Andrews is managing GAM IV, as well as the previous GAM Trading funds. GAM Trading IV will utilise identical strategies to that of its three GAM Trading predecessors. She uses a team of 29 investment professionals based in London and New York.

Harrison said there were several reasons for closing GAM Trading III.

'Our managers believe there is an optimum size for closing these funds ' around $400m,' he said. 'The reason for that is that for our core holdings we prefer a weighting of around 15-20%. For a $400m fund, that is a significant investment and there may be problems accessing that number of shares.'

'A related point is that we do not want to own a high percentage of an underlying fund. Once we have $60 or $70m in any individual fund, that is as much as we want to invest with a single manager. That does not apply to some of the bigger and well-known fund managers such as the Tudor Joneses of this world. If we own $60 or $70m of one of the many newer funds running up to $1bn, that is a reasonable percentage of that fund.'

The Trading funds are dollar based but also have euro, sterling and Swiss franc share classes. Minimum investment is $15,000, E15,000, £10,000 and CHF30,000. The initial charge is 5% and the annual management fee is 1.76%.

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