XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX 2012 EUROHEDGE AWARDS

EUROHEDGE AWARDS 2012 XXXXXX XXXXXXXXX

Early contenders start to emerge

W
ith 10 months now gone in a year marked by further market turbulence and macro unpredictability, the early contenders are emerging for the EuroHedge Awards for 2012 the big night when the European hedge fund industry comes together to recognise and honour the outstanding performers of the year. The winners of the 12th annual EuroHedge Awards will be announced at a gala dinner on Thursday 24 January, to be held once again at The Grosvenor House Hotel on Londons Park Lane. As ever, the awards will be judged on an established quantitative methodology based primarily on Sharpe ratios and returns to identify the best risk-adjusted performance across a range of strategies and asset classes, with the aim being to let the numbers do the talking in order to select the nominees and the eventual winners. This has been another tricky year for hedge funds, with markets being buffeted for long periods by swings in risk on/risk off sentiment, and then with equity markets rising sharply in the summer leaving a majority of hedge funds lagging the indices. Arguably, it has been trickier than ever to take advantage of upside opportunities while minimising the ever-present downside risk and the market conditions have tested the mettle of all hedge fund managers. But while overall hedge fund performance may have been a little disappointing in general terms in 2012, many individual funds and firms have again shown great skill in protecting capital and achieving impressive risk-adjusted returns. This is reflected in our first snapshot of the early contenders for the awards next January with the list of initial nominees presented here based on returns for the first 10 months of the year (with November and December still to be counted). We must stress that the lists presented here are very much provisional. Given the continuing turbulence in markets and unpredictability of performance this year, it is very likely and almost certain in most categories that other funds may force themselves into contention after the November and December returns are taken into account and, if so, they will be added to the shortlists. At this early stage the initial lists again feature many previous winners and many that have won multiple nominations over the years. But there are also a number of newer names that feature and this is before we announce our initial list of candidates for the New Fund of the Year awards, which will not be unveiled until next month. To reflect the breadth and depth of the industry in Europe at a time of such acute pressure on the entire financial sector and to highlight the strong performances achieved by many smaller managers we have again decided to keep the minimum asset level for individual strategy categories at $100 million. We are also retaining the Smaller Fund category that we first introduced two years ago for which the minimum asset level

The top performers after another unpredictable year are beginning to take shape as the countdown starts for the EuroHedge Awards in London on Thursday 24 January
AWARD WINNERS 2001-2011
No. of awards 11 9 7 6 5 4 3 2 Company GLG BlueCrest, Gartmore Brummer CQS, Sloane Robinson BlackRock, Brevan Howard, Capital Fund Management, IKOS, Lansdowne, Vega Cheyne, Marshall Wace, RAB, Trafalgar Asset Managers GSA, Henderson, Horseman, The Childrens Investment Fund BGI, Boussard & Gavaudan, Chenavari, Duet, Ennismore, Endeavour, GLC, Jabre, JP Morgan, KBC, Millennium Global, Morley/Aviva, Parvus, Pelagus, Peloton, Perry, Pharo, Polygon, Rubicon, Threadneedle, Tosca, TT 36 South, Algebris, Altima, Antares, Armajaro, Asgard, Auriel, Bailey Coates, BlueGold, BTG Pactual, Cazenove, Concordia, Cumulus, Dalton Strategic, Deephaven, Duet, Eikos, F&C, Finisterre, Focus, Fortelus, Fortis, Global Advisors, GO Capital, Granada, Hermitage, Insight, Jacobson, Julius Baer, Krom River, Lazard, Lionhart, London Diversified, Maple Leaf, Marwyn, MKM Longboat, Moore, MPC, New Amsterdam, Newman Ragazzi, NewSmith, North, North of South, Numen, Oddo, Odey, Pelham, Pivot, Polar, Powe, Prologue, Radar, Sabre, Securis, SGAM, Sofaer, Spinnaker, TradeWind, UFG, Urwick, VR, Wadhwani, Winton, York, Zebedee

after another very testing year

EUROHEDGE AWARDS 2012: INITIAL NOMINATIONS
Early contenders include: EUROPEAN EQUITY OVER $500M Adelphi Europe, AKO, Horseman European Select, Marshall Wace MW Core, Odey European EUROPEAN EQUITY UNDER $500M Corto European, Pensato Europa, Platinum European, Rhine Alpha Stars, Sierra Europe SPECIALIST EQUITY Cygnus Utilities Infrastructure & Renewables, Insinger de Beaufort Real Estate Equity, Maga Smaller Companies, Polar Capital European Forager, Sphera Global Healthcare GLOBAL EQUITY Brummer & Partners Zenit, Hengistbury, Horseman Global, NPJ Global Opportunities EMERGING MARKET EQUITY 36ONE, Insparo Africa & Middle East, OCCO Eastern European, Visio IV South Africa Long/Short EQUITY MARKET NEUTRAL & QUANTITATIVE STRATEGIES GAM Talentum Europe Long/Short, LMR Fund, Marshall Wace MW Market Neutral TOPS, OxAM Quant Fund CONVERTIBLES & VOLATILITY BG Fund, Cassiopeia, CQS Convertible & Quantitative Strategies, Polygon Convertible Opportunity EVENT DRIVEN & DISTRESSED BlueBay Distressed Opportunities, GLG European Distressed, King Street Europe, Sothic Capital European Opportunities, Tosca Opportunity, York European GLOBAL FIXED INCOME Brummer & Partners Nektar, Excalibur, London Diversified, Prologue CREDIT CCA European Credit Opportunities, Chenavari Corporate Credit, Cheyne Total Return Credit, Observatory Credit Markets SPECIALIST FIXED INCOME & CREDIT Algebris Financials CoCo, Asgard Fixed Income, Chenavari Toro Capital IA, Cheyne Real Estate Debt, Danske Invest Hedge Fixed Income Strategies, Midgard Fixed Income EMERGING MARKETS GIB Emerging Markets Opportunities, BlueBay Emerging Market Corporate Alpha, BlueCrest Emerging Markets, Brevan Howard Emerging Markets Strategies, Finisterre Credit MACRO BTG Pactual Global Emerging Markets & Macro, Camomille Global Opportunities, Harmonic Alpha Plus Macro, Max Q, Tanglin MANAGED FUTURES Amplitude Klassik, Amplitude Sinfonie, CCP Quantitative Fund COMMODITIES & CURRENCY Brevan Howard Commodities, Galena Energy, GAM Currency Hedge, LCJ FX Fund, Lupus alpha Commodity Invest MIXED ARBITRAGE & MULTI-STRATEGY 1798 Fundamental Strategies, CQS Diversified, CQS Directional Opportunities, GLG Market Neutral, Hadron EMERGING MANAGER & SMALLER FUND Alcentra Structured Credit Opportunity, Aphilion Specialised Investment, Capricorn GEM Fund, Harmonic Alpha Plus Global Currency, Helium Special Situations NEW FUND OF THE YEAR Initial nominees to be announced next month LONG TERM PERFORMANCE EQUITY STRATEGIES (5 YEARS) AlphaGen Volantis, BlackRock UK Emerging Companies Hedge, Cazenove UK Dynamic Absolute Return, GSA Capital International, OxAM Quant Fund LONG TERM PERFORMANCE MACRO, FIXED INCOME & RELATIVE VALUE (5 YEARS) BlueCrest Capital International, CQS ABS, Pelagus Capital, Prologue, Securis I MANAGEMENT FIRM OF THE YEAR BlueBay Asset Management, Cheyne Capital, CQS, Marshall Wace FUND OF THE YEAR Nominees will be announced on the night

is set at $30 million. This award is designed to recognise those funds that are below the $100 million threshold and which do not quality as new funds, but whose performances would have earned them nominations in their respective categories if they had met the minimum size requirement. For New Funds which considers all those funds with performance inception dates during the 12-month period between July

2011 and June 2012 there is also again a minimum asset level of $30 million. Because of the time period criteria, some new funds that launched in the second half of 2011 may be candidates for a New Fund award as well as in their relevant strategy group while those funds that started trading from July 2012 onwards will only be considered for awards in 2013. This year, there are some small

changes to the main categories. We have decided to group together specialist equity strategies (including funds that focus on specific sectors and countries or on smallcap stocks) for one award, and specialist fixed-income and credit strategies (again for those that focus on specific markets, such as Danish mortgage bonds, or on market segments such as ABS, real estate or financials) for another. And we have decided to separate out emerging market equity funds from other funds that focus on emerging market debt or with a broader macro or multistrategy approach. Last year, given a paucity of contenders in 2011, we had to group together the convertibles and volatility funds with those in the event driven sector. This time, given stronger returns from a number of funds in those areas, we have been able to divide those peer groups back into two separate categories with the event-driven side augmented by some strong performers from the distressed investing space. For all of the individual strategy categories, we aim to stick with the

same triedstrategies and-tested and for methodolfunds in ogy as in macro, previous fixed inyears come and with nomirelative nations value stratbeing idenegies tified from judged on among the Paul Marshall (right) of Marshall Wace receives performfunds with the Management Firm of the Year award for 2011 ance over the strongthe last five est Sharpe ratios among their peer years, relative to their peer groups, groups (so long as they also beat for funds with at least $500 milthe median performance in that lion of assets. peer group); and the winners beFinally, there are the awards ing those with the highest returns for Management Firm of the Year (so long as they are within 25% of (based on a quantitative scoring the top Sharpe). system that ranks absolute and relWe also continue to apply the ative performance across a firms refinement that we have used range of funds) and for the overall since the steep downturn of 2008 Fund of the Year. that stipulates that, in order to For Fund of the Year, as is trawin a nomination, a fund must be ditional, this takes into account within 10% of its high-water mark not only those funds that win so that funds are not rewarded the various individual categomerely for recent good perform- ries, but also any others with exance if they have not also substan- ceptional returns and the contially recouped any earlier losses. tenders will not be announced This year, we will again feature until the evening itself, not least two categories for Long-Term Per- to avoid pre-judging the winners formance for funds in equity in other categories.

Again we stress that these provisional lists reflect early contenders in the various categories and only include at this stage those funds that look likely to feature on the eventual shortlists for the various awards when they are finalised. A fuller list of updated nominations will be announced in midDecember once the returns for November are in which will also include nominations for new funds, and the final list of nominees will be confirmed as early as possible in January. With two more months of performance to count, there is still plenty to play for with most of the award categories still wide open and, in light of the continued unpredictability in markets, much could yet change between now and the end of the year. Demand for tables is expected to be high. If you would like further information on the awards or to book a table, please contact Ian Sanderson on +44 (0) 207 779 7354, email isandserson@hedgefundintelligence. com or Russell Bradley-Cook on +44 (0) 207 779 7342, email rbcook@ hedgefundintelligence.com

EuroHedge

November/December 2012