Natixis Global Asset Management is launching an international hedged equity fund from Gateway Investment Advisers, a Cincinnati-based investment manager, which is designed to provide a “conservative, risk-managed” allocation to global equities.

The launch comes on the back of an initiative being rolled out at Natixis which focuses on constructing “durable” portfolios for volatile times, as part of which the firm is expanding its research team and materials available to investors.

The Gateway International Fund uses the developed equity markets as tracked by the MSCI EAFE Index as a benchmark but aims to achieve these results at “lower risk,” the firm says. It invests in a portfolio of 200-400 international stocks representing six indexes: Australia’s ASX/S&P 200, Europe’s Euro Stoxx 50, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng, Japan’s Nikkei 225, Switzerland’s SMI, and the United Kingdom’s FTSE 100. To hedge its positions the fund sells index call options and buys index put options on the same six indexes.

Overall the portfolio represents over 90 per cent of the equity exposure of the MSCI EAFE Index and will undertake periodic rebalancing to approximate the index's country weightings. Certain countries are excluded due to small index representation and/or undeveloped index option markets.

It is managed by Gateway's Michael Buckius and Kenneth Toft.

Natixis is headquartered in Paris and Boston and has assets under management of $706 billion as of 31 December 2011. It is a subsidiary of France's BPCE.