Man GLG has poached Mike Corcell from RWC Partners to develop a US long-short equity strategy that could rival an Artemis fund that has been going through its own manager changes.
Man GLG said Corcell’s team will also join him in due course.
Corcell joins with over 20 years of experience as a portfolio manager and 16 years in US equity long-short investment. At RWC, he established a US equity team in 2009 and was a portfolio manager overseeing the US long-short equity strategy.
Prior to RWC Partners, he worked for notorious hedge funder Steve Cohen at SAC where he managed a US long-short equity fund. He had also worked at Threadneedle.
Stiff competition at Artemis
The Artemis US long-short team are viewed as the main rivals to the planned Man GLG launch in a space that has limited pickings for retail investors.
“US absolute return is a very limited market with just Artemis and RWC and therefore this new launch will be additive to that,” said AJ Bell head of active portfolios Ryan Hughes. “The performance profile of RWC has been much more volatile than Artemis with the fund clearly running with higher net exposure which may be viewed as a negative by some who may prefer a smoother ride from their absolute return exposure.”
“In addition, the US team at Artemis is very well known in the market despite the forthcoming departure of Stephen Moore which will create some challenges for Man GLG in building profile for the fund.”
US equities bull run
Market volatility in the early stages of the fund “may help him get off to a strong start”, said Hughes.
“Those who are more fearful may well take the opportunity to move some capital out of being long US equities into a lower beta option,” he said.
Tilney managing director Jason Hollands said Artemis US Absolute Return was the fund to beat, while Lowcock pointed to Artemis’s US Extended Alpha fund.
Hollands said the protracted US bull market meant there should be healthy demand for US long-short products.
Nuisance for RWC
The RWC fund Corcell worked on was a small portion of AUM, said Lowcock. “Manager moves are a fact of life and a nuisance for fund groups.”
Teun Johnston (pictured), CEO of Man GLG, said Corcell “has extensive experience as a portfolio manager and has developed a distinctive, repeatable long-short equity investment process”.
“His expertise in US equities will be a complementary addition to Man GLG’s existing equity alternative strategies, offering our clients a compelling new investment proposition with a geographical focus that we do not currently cover.”
