Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Swedish asset manager Alcur Fonder is expanding its fund range with the upcoming launch of a long-only equity fund called Alcur Grow. Expected to launch at the beginning of next year, the fund will maintain a portfolio that contains between 25 to 30 Nordic small- and medium-sized public companies.
Alcur Grow is regulated as a Swedish alternative investment fund but will not engage in short selling. The long-only equity fund can hold up to 30 percent of its portfolio in cash and can make use of leverage. The entire investment team at Alcur Fonder will manage the soon-to-be-launched fund, with Mikael Holm-Lorsell being the responsible manager. Before joining Alcur Fonder as a portfolio manager in January 2019, Holm worked as an equity analyst at Danske Markets, Erik Penser and Swedbank Markets for more than ten years.
Alcur Grow’s investment strategy will rely on the same “Alcur Manual” investment process used to run the asset manager’s two hedge funds, Alcur and Alcur Select. The fund seeks to own its underlying investments for a long time, aiming to build a concentrated portfolio of the Nordic region’s leading companies of the future. “The fund will probably tend to co-move more with the market than our other funds,” writes Alcur Fonder in an announcement, “but at the same time, the risks in the fund are strongly associated with the development of individual companies.”
Alcur Fonder currently manages two hedge funds with different risk-reward profiles. Alcur Select is a long-biased small-cap-focused equity hedge fund managed by a team with Wilhelm Gruvberg in charge. The fund advanced 48.3 percent year-to-date through mid-November and recently received the top honors in the “European Equity: Over $100m” category at the 2020 HFM European Emerging Manager Awards. Alcur Fonder’s older fund, Alcur, is a lower-risk long/short absolute return fund that delivered an annualized return of 5.4 percent since its launch at the beginning of 2007 and gained 13.5 percent year-to-date through mid-November.