Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Two members of the Nordic Hedge Index (NHX) – Titan Opportunities and Taiga Fund – clinched three of the 22 prizes awarded to smaller and younger Europe-based hedge funds at this year’s edition of the EuroHedge Emerging Fund Management Awards that took place in London on November 7. A total of 13 Nordic hedge funds were among the shortlisted nominees (read more).
Titan Opportunities, a London-based fund co-founded and co-managed by Norwegian Espen Westeren and John DellaNoce, received the top prize for the best performance since inception for funds with assets between $20 million and $100 million in the “Multi-Strategy” category. The fund also won in one of the two categories awarding the best performing new funds with a track record of fewer than three years (with assets up to $500 million). Titan Opportunities was chosen as the winner in the “Macro, Fixed Income & Relative Value Strategies” category, whereas the winner in the “Equity Strategies” category was another London-based fund, EG Life-Sciences Fund.
“Everyone at Titan is honoured to have been recognised with an award, though being nominated amongst such a strong peer group is reward enough. We are very happy with the progress we have made since launch, not only from a performance perspective, but in terms of building our team and business,” Titan’s marketing director, William Kitchin, tells HedgeNordic. “Though we have seen a great degree of success, we feel that the addition of new key team members and resources will help us take advantage of one of the best opportunities we have seen in the space over the previous 15-20 years.”
Titan Opportunities invests in equity and credit securities within cyclical and commodity-related sectors. The fund earned a cumulative return of 66.4 percent since incepting on June 9 in 2016, corresponding to an average compounded return of 23.5 percent per year. The fund returned 6.2 percent year-to-date through October despite last month’s turbulence shaving off some of the gains (down an estimated 6.4 percent in October). Titan Capital Management has strengthened their team with the appointment of Anil Joshi as chief operating officer and William Kitchin as marketing director.
Taiga Fund, a Norwegian value-focused long/short equity fund with a long bias, received the award for the European equity hedge fund with the best performance since inception among funds with assets between $250 million and $500 million. The value-oriented vehicle earned an average compounded return of 14.5 percent per year since launching in April of 2008 and beat Gladiator, Incentive Active Value and three other non-Nordic hedge funds to win the award.
Commenting on the award, Taiga’s founder and co-portfolio manager, Ola Wessel-Aas, tells HedgeNordic that: “While the most relevant time period for measuring a fund’s success will always be a matter of debate, we are happy to receive an award for the full track record and experience of our initial investors.”
Taiga Fund employs a value-driven investing approach and maintains a concentrated portfolio that typically consists of ten core long holdings, smaller value plays, and opportunistic short positions. The fund’s net market exposure stood at 62.3 percent at the end of October, with 69.7 percent of net assets allocated to long positions and 7.4 percent of assets assigned to short positions. Taiga Fund had 25 percent of its assets as cash at the end of last month, a sign that equity markets offer few bargains at the moment.
The nominees and winners for the EuroHedge Emerging Fund Management Awards are selected solely based on performance and Sharpe ratios.
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