Man Investments Launches New Hedge Fund Product

by Phillip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

15 February 2008

With an eye to investors wishing to capitalise from current market turmoil, Man Investments has launched an investment product with the ability to perform in both rising and falling markets, it announced recently.

The product, Man AP Stratum Series 2 Ltd, targets medium term growth in excess of 10% pa, regardless of how markets fare.

The key to the market independence of the funds, according to Man, is in the broad diversity of the investments. The product combines over 50 complementary hedge fund managers with the AHL Institutional Programme, which is itself diversified across more than 120 global markets. The result is a spread of investment over a wide range of trading strategies, markets and countries.

According to Man, the new product builds on the success of Man-AP Stratum Ltd, which has achieved an annualised return of 13.1% at relatively low levels of risk (annualised volatility of 13.6%) from 22 October 1999 to 31 December 2007. Its ability to perform during rising and falling markets has been especially beneficial to investors wishing to diversify a traditional portfolio of stocks, property and bonds.

The new fund has a 100% capital guarantee provided by Citibank, N.A., London Branch, and Man says that the capital guarantee has the potential to increase in value by progressively locking in a portion of the profits during the life of the product.

"When markets are shaky the real strengths of AP Stratum is its ability to maximise opportunities for profit and spread risk over a range of markets and strategies", stated John Morrison, Chief Executive of Man Investments.

"The product performed very well during previous corrections in global markets and the core AHL investment approach has a history of performing during stock market corrections over the last 20 years," he concluded.

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