Abria Launches Alternative Fund For Canada’s Retail Investors

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore.com

11 August 2005

Leading Canadian alternative investment firm Abria Alternative Investments has created a new fund allowing retail investors to partake in a leveraged alternative fund, a first for the Canadian market.

According to the firm, the Abria XL Trust is designed to meet individual investors’ expectations for solid returns while keeping risk lower than that associated with the equities market. The fund is an enhanced version of the award-winning Abria Diversified Arbitrage Trust, ranked the number one Risk-Adjusted Alternative Strategy Fund in Canada.

Abria says that the fund uses a market neutral investment strategy, maintaining low correlation to equity and bond markets, which keeps volatility low and that the fund’s tax structure is uniquely beneficial; with no annual distribution for tax purposes, and at disposition, returns are treated as a capital gain, letting investors keep more of what they make.

“We’ve introduced leverage to the fund in order to provide equity-like returns in the 7-11% range, while maintaining a level of risk consistent with that of long-term bonds or roughly one-half that of equities," commented Henry Kneis, Abria’s CEO and Chief Investment Officer.

"With most analysts and forecasters predicting very modest returns from the equities markets over the next ten years, it makes a lot of sense for investors to have an alternative strategy available to them. I’m moving my money to the XL Trust," he added.

Mr. Kneis, whose track record dates to 1987, claims he has had positive returns for every low volatility portfolio he has traded, managed or supervised in every year of its existence. Even when global capital markets were down – October 1987, early 1994, August to October 1998, September 2001 – his portfolios have had positive returns, he says.

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