The UCITS III fund will have daily liquidity, access to the full range of UCITS III investment powers and will contain a mix of long and short positions, said Thames River.
The fund will be managed by Kristof Bulkai and Hugo Rogers, co-managers of the Thames River Water & Agriculture Absolute Return Fund and Thames River Isis Fund, a Cayman Isles domiciled global emerging markets hedge fund.
Bulkai and Rogers will join the F&C emerging equities team led by Jeff Chowdhry. They will leverage the research and resources of the existing 11 team which managed $5.6bn of Emerging and Asia ex Japan equity assets at 31 December 2011.
According to Thames River, the fund will target annual returns in the high teens net of fees, aiming to protect capital in tough market conditions.
Chowdhry said they are delighted that Kristof and Hugo are joining the team which has recently been strengthened by the addition of Mike Sell from Nevsky Capital. Emerging equities is part of F&C’s DNA and the build-out of our product set into the absolute return space is a landmark development.
