Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Swedish fintech company Nowonomics has acquired the remaining minority stake in boutique asset manager QQM Fund Management from partner and CEO Ola Björkmo. The publicly-listed fintech company behind savings platform Nowo now owns 100 percent of QQM, which oversees about SEK 700 million in assets under management across the long-only equity fund Nowo Global Fund and systematic market-neutral equity fund QQM Equity Hedge.
In mid-2021, Nowonomics announced an agreement to acquire a 72 percent stake in QQM Fund Management via a non-cash stock issue. The selling shareholders included QQM’s partner and portfolio manager Jonas Sandefeldt, COO Grant Loon, and Mangold. QQM’s Partner and CEO Ola Björkmo retained the remaining stake of 28 percent and continued in his role as CEO and Portfolio Manager to develop QQM under the umbrella of Nowonomics. He has now agreed to sell his 28 percent stake in QQM in exchange for newly-issued shares in Nowonomics.
“The fact that we have agreed with Ola Björkmo to acquire the remaining minority stake in QQM is a fun and important step for the Nowo Group’s formation,” comments Rutger Selin, CEO of Nowo. Björkmo will become a significant shareholder in Nowonomics and will continue to manage the two funds alongside Jonas Sandefeldt. “The fact that QQM now becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Nowo is important as we now move forward with our new business area of occupational pensions.”
“Nowo is an exciting and innovative company and I look forward to continuing to manage Nowo Global Fund and QQM Equity Hedge.”
“Nowo is an exciting and innovative company and I look forward to continuing to manage Nowo Global Fund and QQM Equity Hedge,” comments Ola Björkmo, CEO of QQM Fund Management. “The new group operates in a very interesting market with great opportunities,” he continues. “The decision to apply for a permit for insurance distribution in the large and growing membership base of more than 150,000 members makes the occupational pension area particularly interesting when we look at how we can develop both existing and new products and offers.”
Following Nowo’s acquisition of a majority stake in QQM Fund Management, the manager of the equities-focused market-neutral hedge fund QQM Equity Hedge also took over the management of Nowo Global Fund in 2022. 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 0.3 percent in the difficult market conditions of 2022 and is down an estimated 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023. QQM Equity Hedge has returned a cumulative 57 percent since inception at the beginning of 2008, corresponding to an annualized return of 3.0 percent.
