Ragnhild Wiborg, the founder president and senior partner of Wiborg Kapitalförvaltning AB in Sweden, as well as majority owner and portfolio manager of the Consepio fund, has announced the closure of the hedge fund.

The company said that the fund had "recently disappointed investors and portfolio managers alike", and blamed the ongoing macro environment, including quantiative easing, for undermining the ability of managers to make investment decisions based on equity fundamentals.

"Our investment philosophy has always been based on a long-term fundamental view of the economy, financial markets and individual stocks. Consepio thrived on long investments in ‘value' stocks, which typically exhibit a lower-than-average level of liquidity, as well as on short investments in ‘hyped' stocks which eventually plummet spectacularly," the company added.

"In the current environment, where markets are influenced more by money flows driven by government and central bankers' actions rather than by underlying fundamentals of economic conditions or company performance, it has become difficult to realize profits on ‘value' and ‘hyped' investments within a time frame acceptable to our unit holders and ourselves as portfolio managers. We do not see this environment changing in the near future. In light of this, we have arrived at the painful decision to wind down Consepio and return the money to our investors."

According to reports in Norway's E24, which interviewed Wiborg, she said that the decision to close the fund did not arise because of pressure from investors.

The fund's assets are about SEK332m, with a return of about 87% since inception in February 2002, according to data from Wiborg Kapitalförvaltning. Annual return has averaged 6.14%.

Before starting up Wiborg Kapitalförvaltning, Ragnhild Wiborg was CIO at Norwegian asset manager Odin, responsible for the Odin Norden, Norge, Offshore, Maritim and Europa funds.