Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – In June of last year, Swedish fintech company Nowonomics announced an agreement to acquire a 72 percent stake in hedge fund boutique QQM Fund Management via a non-cash stock issue. With the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, Finansinspektionen, approving the deal back in October, Nowonomics has now completed the acquisition after meeting all required conditions.
The selling shareholders, including QQM portfolio manager Jonas Sandefeldt (pictured left), COO Grant Loon and Mangold, received newly-issued shares in Nowonomics. Ola Björkmo (pictured right), the founder and current CEO of QQM Fund Management, will retain the remaining stake of 28 percent and will continue in his role as CEO to develop QQM under the umbrella of Nowonomics after the acquisition.
Following completion of the acquisition, QQM’s systematic market-neutral fund, QQM Equity Hedge, will become available on the fintech’s money savings app NOWO alongside the NOWO Fund, a mixed fund managed by Tellus Fonder. The money savings app has so far allowed its more than 65,000 members to save money by allocating to NOWO Fund, which returned 24.8 percent last year, 17.6 percent in 2020 and 27.9 percent in 2019.
Conditional on a separate approval by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority, QQM Fund Management will take over the management of the NOWO Fund. The portfolio management team at QQM plans to run the NOWO Fund by employing a systematic long-only equity strategy, inspired from QQM Equity Hedge’s market-neutral strategy with a focus on diversification.
“We will soon begin the transfer of NOWO Fund to QQM after approval by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.”
“The completion of this acquisition creates the conditions for expanding NOWO’s fund offering to NOWO’s more than 65,000 members,” comments Rutger Selin, the CEO of NOWO. “We will soon begin the transfer of NOWO Fund to QQM after approval by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority,” he continues. “With total assets under management of approximately SEK 700 million and continuous inflows, we are now achieving a good revenue stream which, together with reduced external costs, creates good conditions for profitability this year.”
“The management team remains intact in QQM and our focus is, as always, to create a good risk-adjusted return for our unit holders. Together with NOWO, we will build a growing fund company with innovative products.”
“QQM’s owners received an attractive offer to sell part of the company to an innovative player in the market,” comments Ola Björkmo, the CEO of QQM Fund Management. “The management team remains intact in QQM and our focus is, as always, to create a good risk-adjusted return for our unit holders,” he emphasizes. “Together with NOWO, we will build a growing fund company with innovative products.”
QQM’s equities-focused market-neutral hedge fund gained 11.6 percent in 2021, the fund’s third-best year since Ola Björkmo and Jonas Sandefeldt started managing QQM Equity Hedge in July of 2010. QQM Equity Hedge employs a systematic market-neutral strategy designed to capture the correlation between fundamentals and equity prices. The market-neutral fund edged down 0.7 percent in January this year as stock markets declined sharply across the board.
