The latest in funds and investment news from across the world.

New Frontier, Mizuho
New Frontier Capital Management Hong Kong – part of Japan’s Mizuho Securities - has signed a collaborative MOU with Blue Apple Partners to create a healthcare fund that will be overseen by both parties.

The new entity, which is called the Blue Apple New Frontier Healthcare Fund, is structured as a healthcare management and investment company, based in Abu Dhabi. New Frontier Capital Management said it will “become the first Japanese GP [general partner] to enter the Middle East in the medical and healthcare sector."

Opportunities sponsored and managed by Blue Apple have attracted institutional investors like Saudi Aramco and lnvestcorp, New Frontier said in a statement yesterday. 

The fund will invest in the medical and healthcare sector in the Middle East and North Africa, concentrating on hospitals, medical infrastructure, medical systems, health tech and health promotion. The fund will target a size of $300 million raised from both domestic and global investors in the Middle East, Japan, Asia, Europe and the US.

The investment house said the medical and healthcare sector is a “promising sector” of growth. In the UAE alone, the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.5 per cent until 2023. The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified focus on healthcare, such as in the venture capital and private markets space (see here). 

The fund will use the information network related to the fund businesses of New Frontier Capital Management and build a business development desk in the fund management company to collect medical and healthcare-related corporate information in the MENA region. 

New Frontier Capital Management Hong Kong is the strategic partner of Mizuho Securities' private equity fund business. NFCM conducts the planning, fund launch and management of various global funds including dispatching board directors and investment committee members as co-GPs. NFCM will also manage and operate the fund's BDD.

NFCM manages global PE funds such as the CMH Growth Fund (China PE) with China Merchants Group and Tata Capital Growth Fund (India PE) with Tata Capital as well as global VC funds such as Cybernaut New Frontier Venture Fund (China VC), AI Human (Australia VC) and Africa Healthcare Fund (Africa VC).
 

Janus Henderson Investors
Janus Henderson Investors has launched a global multi-strategy fund investing in diversified alternative assets.

The fund, named Janus Henderson Global Multi-Strategy Fund, is managed by David Elms and Stephen Cain, based in London and Denver respectively. It will draw upon Janus Henderson’s experience in multi-strategy investing, with the team managing over $11.6 billion in assets globally.

Available in a UCITS structure, the fund will primarily be sold in Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America to wholesale, retail and institutional investors. It will also be available in an Australian managed investment scheme structure as a directly invested feeder fund into the UCITS entity. 

The strategy is currently managed as a hedge fund domiciled in the Cayman Islands and the new launch makes the strategy more accessible to investors, Janus Henderson Investors said. The fund invests equities, fixed income, their associated derivatives and commodities – across a complementary set of investment strategies. 

The fund aims to deliver positive absolute returns, regardless of market conditions, over any 12-month period, and has an outperformance target of cash plus 7 per cent a year, before the deduction of charges, over any three-year period, with volatility of 4-8 per cent.

“Diversification works well in up markets but is unreliable in down markets, like March 2020, when investor panic and liquidation induces correlation and all risk assets fall in a synchronised manner. We address this issue by running a diversified set of protection strategies that aim to provide positive returns in down markets and are the mirror image of the diversified `risk on’ strategies we use to generate returns in normal markets,” David Elms, portfolio manager, said.

Aviva Investors 
Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva, has launched the Aviva Investors US Investment Grade Bond Fund. The fund is managed by Joshua Lohmeier, Mike Cho and George Bailey.

The fund mainly holds US dollar-denominated investment-grade corporate bonds from around the world. It seeks to earn income and increase capital value while outperforming the Bloomberg Barclays US Credit Index over the long term (five years or more).

The fund’s investment process takes a long-term, active management approach; using portfolio construction and risk allocation techniques combined with high-conviction investments at both a company and sector level to deliver optimum risk-adjusted returns. 

The team will focus on understanding where credit markets are inefficient in order to construct portfolios, while identifying higher quality US corporate bonds through an assessment of the business strengths and risks associated with the underlying companies. They will also take into account the valuation of the bonds relative to the market and the views of independent risk rating agencies, while taking advantage of short-term opportunities when they arise, Aviva Investors said in a statement.