Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – The 2019 Investors Choice winners have been announced, and one Nordic name features among the winners. Stockholm-based long/short equity fund Bodenholm was named the best “Global Equity Fund” with assets over $500 million, exactly one year after receiving a similar top prize at the 2018 Investors Choice Awards.

Bodenholm, which just recently launched the UCITS version of its long/short equity strategy, competed with five other funds for the top spot in the “Global Equity Fund over $500m” category. The Bodenholm fund’s USD share class returned 8.9 percent last year. Founded by Per Johansson (pictured), Bodenholm employs a Europe-focused fundamental equity long/short strategy with a global mandate. Bodenholm aims to deliver absolute returns with limited market exposure and low correlated to equity markets. Currently overseeing €700 million in assets under management, the fund managed to generate an annualized return of 7.1 percent since launching in September 2015.

“In normal circumstances, Bodenholm won’t win awards if only pure performance numbers determine the winners, as we run a strategy with low net market exposure,” Per Johansson tells HedgeNordic. “Given our focus on risk management and generating uncorrelated returns, we have a better chance at delivering good returns in falling markets, which should help the compounding of returns over time,” he adds.

Bodenholm delivered a strong return last year relative to most hedge fund players in the Nordics, but the team running the Brummer & Partners-backed vehicle reckons that an even higher return could have been squeezed out of its long positions. “Some of our longs hurt us, but we were protected by a solid short book,” says Johansson. The fund’s basket of short positions has been expanding after Bodenholm allocated more resources to strengthening their team focused on identifying short candidates, with the fund maintaining a net market exposure closer to neutral towards the end of 2018.

The nominees and winners of the Investors Choice Awards, organized by data platform Allocator, are selected based on a range of both quantitative and qualitative criteria judged by a panel of independent institutional investors. The selection process incorporates a set of qualitative criteria covering the investment process, risk management framework and depth of research team, as well as includes a set of quantitative performance measures such as annualized returns, volatility, and maximum drawdown.

Commenting on receiving the Investors Choice Award, Erik Orving, the CEO of Bodenholm Capital, says “we are happy and honored to have received this award and many other awards in the past 18 months or so, which acknowledge the hard work of our team has put in and recognize that we are doing something different in the marketplace.”