Asian Hedge Fund House Plans Launch Of Four New Funds

by Phillip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

23 April 2003

Descartes Finance, a Hong Kong based fund provider, is to launch four new hedge fund products in June of this year which will consist of a convertible hedging fund, a global macro fund, an equity long/short fund and multi strategy fund, reports FinanceAsia.com. The funds will be domiciled in the Cayman Islands.

"We will be launching two more single strategy funds, in 2004 and 2005 respectively," says Edgar Chuan, co-founder of Descartes. "We have a segregated portfolio company structure, so each fund is independent but with the umbrella fund able to invest in all the others." These additional funds will comprise a fixed income arbitrage fund and a foreign exchange and index strategy fund, to be launched in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

The Descartes fund was created in 2001 and specialises in providing alternative investments to the expert Asian investor. It has attracted between $30 million and $50 million investment capital, much of it from institutional investors and all of it from the Asia region.

The fund claims to be backed by a team of respected investment professionals who have an average of 9 years' experience in the fund industry working for a number of major players in the world of investment banking.

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank provide prime brokerage services to the fund, with the administrator being the Bank of Bermuda.

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