Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Less than three months after joining St. Petri Capital as Partner and Portfolio Manager, healthcare specialist Claus Johansen has decided to leave the Danish hedge fund boutique and launch his own firm Global Health Invest. Johansen’s move comes shortly after St. Petri Capital abandoned its plans to launch a long-only European small-cap fund due to fundraising challenges as an independent asset manager boutique.
Johansen, who has a nearly 20-year tenure as a healthcare-focused portfolio manager at Danske Bank, joined St. Petri Capital earlier this year to launch a global long-only healthcare fund. The St. Petri Global Healthcare Fund was expected to launch in the second half of 2023. Johansen has now opted to establish his own fund.
“…now it is time for a new adventure. I have chosen to run my very own fund under my own auspices.”
“Thanks to St. Petri Capital, Jens Wiberg Larsson, Henrik Dahlin, and Johann Grøndahl for the last few months of good sparring,” writes Johansen on LinkedIn. “But now it is time for a new adventure. I have chosen to run my very own fund under my own auspices.” With the new fund, Johansen intends to provide Danish investors with an investment alternative in the broad healthcare sector. “It’s a super concentrated portfolio where I also invest my own wealth. I have ‘my hand on the hob,’ so to speak,” according to Johansen.
Similar to the strategy planned for the St. Petri Global Healthcare Fund, Johansen will focus on identifying profitable businesses with management teams that excel in capital allocation and offer solutions benefiting patients and society. “I have invested in the global healthcare sector for the past 19 years, and have therefore seen and tried a little of everything. I have a thoroughly tested investment process,” he writes on LinkedIn. “The investment strategy has been tested for the last five years, and has continuously created the additional performance that I had hoped for but did not dare dream of.”
The planned launches of the European small-cap fund and the healthcare-focused fund of Claus Johansen were intended to complement St. Petri Capital’s existing core offering, consisting of a thematic-focused long/short equity fund. Managed by co-founders Michal Danielewicz and Jens Larsson, St. Petri L/S has achieved an annualized return of approximately 13 percent since its inception in early 2018 after recording a 98 percent gain in 2020. The fund recorded a gain of 4.7 percent in the difficult market conditions of 2022 and experienced a decline of 5.2 percent in the first four months of 2023.
