The fund has been created as a joint-venture with The General Investment & Development Companies, a Boston real estate family office, and targets investments in real estate-related securities across the capital structure.

The debut offering from Merestone is a long-short/multi-strategy opportunity hedge fund focused on the publicly traded side of real estate companies and corporations which are in industries that are directly impacted by trends in real estate or that have embedded real estate exposure.

"We feel that the capital markets-end of the real estate spectrum is an underserved one that traditionally was the realm of the long-only Reit manager. Merestone Partners is an attempt to provide more flexibility - both in recognising the intrinsic real estate value that can occur in non-Reit companies and in maximizing opportunities by moving across the capital stack. The goal is to retain liquidity while still allowing for superior real returns," says St Pierre.

The fund has a 1.5 per cent management fee and a 20 per cent performance fee as well as a USD500,000 minimum investment. It opened with around USD25m and has a market capacity of USD500m.