Invesco to launch new hedge fund

Invesco, part of the Amvescap group of investment management firms, plans to launch a new fund at the end of this month that will focus on market neutral and financial futures strategies in the US and European markets.

The product will be global, and the firm will try to get authorisation for its launch in various markets, says John Middleton, the New York-based portfolio manager of Invesco’s structured products group, during a trip to Hong Kong. Middleton declined to say exactly what markets it would target.

The product will be similar to its existing absolute return fund, which employs comparable strategies and has about $100 million of assets under management. Invesco’s absolute return fund includes feeder funds in the US and Asia, which invest all their assets into the master fund. The feeder funds include a principal guaranteed fund that was authorised by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) for distribution to retail investors in 2003.

The firm has been investing in its managed account platform, but Middleton adds: “We’re spending more time now focusing on fund-of-funds in the US, where we can provide the equity market neutral, managed futures and a couple of strategies that are combinations of those strategies to the fund-of-funds.”

The firm has also recently introduced currency strategies into its managed futures model, and these involve trading futures contracts on the yen, euro, pound and Canadian dollar, adds Middleton.

Carlos Higuchi, the Hong Kong-based managing director and head of alternative investment products for Asia Pacific at Invesco, says the firm is working on another principal guaranteed product in Tokyo and Canada, because “there is a tremendous amount of interest in principal guaranteed products”.

The firm is also pushing real estate as a form of alternative investment, and plans to launch a global real estate investment trust (Reit) product at the end of the year. Invesco is looking to register that product in Singapore, Higuchi adds. “Japan is really quite ahead in terms of product knowledge and product expertise from clients’ perspective. We hope to do the same [products] here in Asia so that people become a little bit more familiar on that basis,” he says.