Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Two Nordic hedge funds – Bodenholm and QQM Equity Hedge – took home two awards offered by Hedge Fund Review at the European Performance Awards 2018 ceremony held in London on November 22. Patrik Brummer, Chairman of Brummer & Partners, was given a lifetime achievement award.

Bodenholm, a Europe-focused equity hedge fund backed by hedge fund powerhouse Brummer & Partners, won the “Best long/short equity hedge emerging manager” award, a category that honours the best young long/short equity fund over the 12-month period that ended June 2018. Bodenholm, which manages a little over $1 billion in assets as of the end of October, earned a compounded return of 10.7 percent during the 12 months that ended in June of this year. Bodenholm returned 12.3 percent last year and gained 8.6 percent year-to-date through the end of October.

Bodenholm employs fundamental analysis to build a concentrated portfolio of high-quality companies and opportunistically initiates short positions in companies that face various issues. Short investment opportunities are predominantly identified using the so-called forensic accounting approach by a dedicated team of analysts.

Systematic market-neutral fund QQM Equity Hedge, meanwhile, took home the top prize in the “Best sub-$100m hedge” category, after delivering a compounded return of 16.8 percent in the 12-month period that ended June. The equity-focused market-neutral fund was up 7.6 percent last year and gained 4.7 percent year-to-date through the end of October.

QQM Equity Hedge, managed by Ola Björkmo and Jonas Sandefeldt, uses a systematic strategy to build a market-neutral portfolio that seeks to capture the effects of fundamental momentum in European equity markets. The fund’s market-neutral strategy exhibits very low correlation with equity markets, with the fund’s returns since launching in January of 2008 exhibited a correlation of 0.04 with the OMX Stockholm Benchmark Index.

“We are honoured and pleased to have been officially recognized for the strategy’s track record of delivering uncorrelated returns,” Ola Björkmo tells HedgeNordic on winning the HFR award. “We thank the judging panel of the European Performance Awards for recognising our achievement, but most of all we thank the fund’s investors who have shown confidence in our market-neutral strategy,” adds Jonas Sandefeldt.

The winners at the Hedge Fund Review European Performance Awards 2018 were selected using a methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative factors. Shortlisted candidates were ranked based on returns, Sharpe and Sortino ratios, and downside deviation, after which a judging panel selected the winners by considering the quantitative analysis and other qualitative factors related to experience and expertise.

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