Summit Group debuts interest in hedge funds

The Summit Group, a London-based venture capital firm, is considering backing more hedge funds following its first investment in the asset class earlier this year.

Summit, which has around $31m in investments, completed backing Oxford & Cambridge Investment Management, a hedge fund company set up by former Barclays Global Investors researcher Ed Boscott, with £0.5m in seed capital in April this year.

Summit's managing director, Kit Hunter Gordon, said the company has since been approached by other start-up hedge fund firms, both looking to manage single strategy hedge funds and funds of hedge funds.

Summit is interested in seeding start-up hedge funds, or backing relatively new hedge funds that run strategies and show a business model which suggest they will be able to provide efficient returns in current market conditions.

'We are looking for strategies that can handle substantial volumes, with consistent performance and low risk, and this tends to be market neutral type strategies,' said Hunter Gordon.

'If we were approached by companies running other strategies that are not correlated to market movements, we could be interested in them too.'

Ultimately, however, each request for backing will be looked at individually on its own merits, he added.