Bring Them Home

Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Of the seven Nordic hedge funds nominated for this year’s HFM European Emerging Manager Awards, three collected awards at yesterday’s awards ceremony in London. Danske Invest Fixed Income Global Value, Formue Nord Markedsneutral and Origo Quest 1 were the winners in their respective award categories.

Thøger Dam Johansen, CEO of Formue Nord.

Carl Rydin, Portfolio Manager at Origo Capital.

Danske Invest Fixed Income Global Value, managed by Anders Møller Lumholtz, received the top prize in the “Fixed Income: Over $100 million” category ahead of Norwegian fund Borea Høyrente and two other non-Nordic vehicles. Launched in June of last year, the Danske fund generated a cumulative return of 13.3 percent since inception after gaining 10.8 percent year-to-date. The fund applies flexible and dynamic investment strategies to invest in fixed income markets, predominantly in bonds and money market instruments from the member states of the EU, members states of the OECD, China or international public bodies. “We are extremely proud that one of our new hedge funds managed to come out on top,” comments Michael Petry, who is head of hedge funds at Danske Bank Asset Management, on the achievement. “The fund’s performance has been impressive so far, with positive returns in 15 out of 17 months,” he adds.

After receiving two other awards earlier this year, Formue Nord Markedsneutral collected the prize for the best fund within the “Multi-Strategy” award category ahead of four non-Nordic peers. The Danish market-neutral fund focusing on special situations, which has been enjoying 14 consecutive months of positive performance, gained 12.7 percent year-to-date after returning 13.6 percent last year. Commenting on the award, founder and chief investment officer Rasmus Viggers says that “this is our third award this year, so obviously we are very pleased, but we also focus on staying grounded and keep working hard to deliver diversification to our co-investors through uncorrelated returns.”

Stockholm-based long/short equity fund Origo Quest 1 was named the best fund in the “Equity: Under $100 million” category, leapfrogging systematic market-neutral fund QQM Equity Hedge and four other funds. Managed by Stefan Roos and Carl Rydin, Origo Quest 1 scouts the Nordic small- and mid-cap space for strong businesses with solvable short-term issues and engages in active ownership to fix the problems. The fund returned 9.2 percent year-to-date and has generated an annualised return of 9.8 percent since launching in February 2013. “We are of course very delighted for having received this award,” Karl Eckberg, Origo’s Chief Operating Officer, tells HedgeNordic. “It is an acknowledgement that our persistent investment management model works and is truly long-term.”

The HFM European Emerging Manager Awards honour the best-performing smaller and recently-launched hedge funds based in Europe. The winners of the HFM European Emerging Manager Awards are selected by a panel comprised of leading institutional investors, private investors, and specialist investment consultants. The shortlisted funds are judged on absolute performance, as well as the standard deviation of returns and performance relative to the relevant HFM benchmark. The judges also consider the relative assets under management, nature of the investment strategy, track records, and other supporting materials and professional knowledge about the shortlisted funds to pick the winners.

Congratulations to the winners!

Image by Andrzej Rembowski from Pixabay