The $500m Aberdeen Alternative Strategies Fund was seeded by Aberdeen Plc and has also attracted significant early investment from existing clients, Aberdeen said.
According to the firm, the launch of the new fund establishes it as one of the world’s largest multi-manager liquid alternatives managers and forms part of a broader strategy to diversify and grow its solutions business.
As part of this strategy the firm has also bought Arden Asset Management and Flag Capital Management. Once both acquisitions are complete, the firm’s alternatives platform will have over $39bn in assets under management.
According to Andrew McCaffery, global head of alternatives at Aberdeen, the early demand for the fund is a clear indication that alternative investment strategies are becoming “increasingly central to client portfolios and moving into the mainstream”.
“Many investors are constrained by complexity, liquidity, transparency and regulation. It is this kind of investor that will look to solutions like the Aberdeen Alternative Strategies Fund to help diversify their portfolios,” he said.
The fund is run by the firm’s 18-strong hedge funds team led by Russell Barlow, who reports directly to McCaffery and comprises a selection of alternative investment managers running dedicated mandates, Aberdeen said.
At launch the fund was invested in eight managers: three running global macro discretionary strategies; one running a global macro systematic strategy; three running relative value strategies, one risk arbitrage, the other two fixed income; and one running a global long short equity market neutral strategy.
This structure provides the team with greater control and transparency over the assets under management than they would otherwise have and leads, Aberdeen said, to “more granular risk analysis and investor liquidity”.
The fund has an ongoing charges figure of 1.6% and a minimum investment requirement of $100,000.
