Alt Investments
Man Ups Managed Accounts Transparency With New Portal
London-based Man Group, the world’s largest listed hedge fund business, has launched a new managed accounts system called Clarus with the aim of giving investors greater portfolio transparency.
Clarus, a proprietary online portal, has been developed so that Man can share investment insights with clients and provide more data and analysis than historical performance-based reporting, the firm said in a statement. Clients using the system will see, graphically, their exposure to underlying risk factors in both their managed accounts and aggregated as part of their wider portfolio.
“Clarus provides the heightened transparency our investors seek,” said Eric Burl, Man’s head of managed accounts, adding that now more than ever investors are wanting to see how assets are controlled, that liquidity is good and that they can get their cash back when they want it. During the height of the financial crisis many funds imposed “gates” preventing investors from withdrawing their money, which came as a shock to many who had not fully read the small print on their investments.
Clarus’ capabilties include performance and performance decomposition, style attribution and performance, and value-at-risk, broken down into foreign exchange, commodity, equity and interest rate sensitivities.
Man currently manages some $8.0 billion of assets within managed accounts.
In other news, earlier this month the firm opened its $50 million seeded Man Commodities Fund for both retail and institutional investors.
The fund - available to investors in several European countries with a minimum investment of $1,000 for retail investors and $100,000 for institutional investors - is aimed at investors seeking portfolio diversification from standard investments in stocks and bonds.
The actively-managed fund aims to outperform passive indices and minimise downside risk by obtaining liquid, long-only exposure to the Man Systematic Commodity Index. The index is based on trading in 25 liquid futures contracts in precious metals, industrial metals, energy and agricultural products.
