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The Geneva-based emerging market debt specialist is transitioning its well-performing fund from a largely private investment vehicle to a UCITS structure as part of a bid to target a wider range of investors
The First Geneva Global High Yield Bond Fund, an emerging markets-focused debt strategy run by Switzerland-based manager First Geneva Capital Partners, has built a solid track record since it was launched in August 2012 by managing director Tim Rogers and managing partner Ian McCall.
Targeting an annualised return of 10% with no leverage, the Luxembourg-domiciled SICAV structure has notched up an impressive 21.42% year-to-date return in 2016. As the strategy's successful run continues, the Geneva-based firm is now upgrading the fund to a UCITS format - a process expected to be completed by early 2017 - so as to open it up to a wider range of investors.
First Geneva was established in 2010 by Canadian nationals Rogers and McCall, along with Norwegian Morten Kielland - well-known in the industry as the founder of Key Asset Management, one of the earliest European fund of hedge funds groups.
Rogers has some 20 years' experience of emerging markets investing, including 15 years as a portfolio manager, with a particular focus on Russia and central and eastern Europe. He was a founding partner of MCT Asset Management in 1996, establishing and managing a number of strategies with combined assets of more than $1 billion - including the MC Russian Market Fund, MCT Special Opportunities, MC Premium Eastern Europe and the Red Square Debt Fund.
Between 1996 and 2008, he was on the investment committee of Switzerland-based investment firm Eastern Natural Resources. From 2005 to 2008, he was head of asset management at the $4 billion Valartis Group, the Swiss investment group formed out of a merger between MCT and OZ Bankers, as well as a member of its board and of its executive management committee. In 2008, he established Quesnell Capital SA, an independent private investment company.
Before joining First Geneva, McCall was a portfolio manager with London-based global emerging and credit market hedge fund Argo Capital Management. He began his career in 1989, financing trade between Finland and the former Soviet Union, based initially in Helsinki and then Tokyo before moving to London...