Och-Ziff comes to Europe with onshore hedge fund
America's Och-Ziff Capital Management Group is the latest hedge fund manager to make its expertise available to Europe's retail investors by launching a Ucits compliant product with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
America’s Och-Ziff Capital Management Group is the latest hedge fund manager to make its expertise available to Europe’s retail investors by launching a Ucits compliant product with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The team running Och-Ziff European Multi-Strategy UCITS fund, under head of European investments Michael Cohen, will seek to achieve consistent absolute returns by seeking out pricing inefficiencies in equity and debt securities of European companies.
The fund from the $29bn manager is available in Germany, Ireland, Austria, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands for minimum commitments of $1,000. Distribution in more jurisdictions is planned.
Other Ucits compliant hedge funds that have launched on Merrill Lynch Investment Solutions, the bank’s four-year old Ucits platform, include offerings from AQR Capital Management, Marshall Wace, Graham Capital, York Capital and Zweig-DiMenna.
BlueCrest Capital Management put a Ucits compliant version of its BlueTrend fund on the platform, too, but later closed it down citing unacceptable divergence between returns from its onshore and offshore variants.
Och-Ziff’s fund engages in long/short equity special situations, merger arbitrage, convertible and derivative arbitrage and credit strategies.
Daniel Och, who founded the firm in 1994 after more than a decade at Goldman Sachs, said: “We are pleased to extend investors access to our investment capabilities and talented investment team in Europe through a Ucits III-compliant fund.”
Mike Stewart, co-head of Global Equities at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said Och-Ziff had invested in Europe for 13 years.
