The new fund, which was launched yesterday, is a sub-fund of Lazard Global Investment Funds, an Irish-registered and Ucits-compliant Oeic.
Mike Wariebi, head of alternative investments, marketing and business development in EMEA at Lazard, said: “The transition from Matrix to the Lazard Ucits platform has been seamless and we welcome existing and future investors.
"We anticipate significant demand for the fund as the market is seeing $90bn of convertible debt maturing over the next few years. We believe companies looking to re-finance debt and re-structure may create opportunities in special situations.”
The fund will aim to generate returns by exploiting anomalies across a corporate’s securities, using proprietary screening tools, quantitative analysis and fundamental research.
It uses a strategic macro-economic overview to optimise portfolio design across two interrelated strategies: special situations and events and convertible arbitrage.
Sean Reynolds is the portfolio manager of the fund, based in New York with his investment team of six. Reynolds said: “We anticipate on-going periods of volatility spikes as markets digest political, economic and sovereign events and this will likely create a generally volatile investment environment in the near term.
“The Lazard Opportunities Fund is designed to take try to advantage of increased volatility via its current bias towards short-dated corporate credit. The emphasis on shorter-dated trades where outcomes are more definable provides appropriate exposure to the beta of the asset class, but also helps to cushion during periods of risk aversion from the alpha generation delivered via special situations.”