Crédit Agricole Structured Asset Management (CASAM) has acquired 100% of Ursa Capital LLC, the holding company for Starview Capital Management and Lyra Capital. Crédit Agricole Structured Asset Management (CASAM) has acquired 100% of Ursa Capital LLC, the holding company for Starview Capital Management and Lyra Capital.

Ursa - now renamed CASAM Americas - is the parent holding company to an asset management group specializing in research and providing unique investment structures for corporate, hedge fund, derivative and index clients.
Ursa's wholly-owned subsidiaries are:

• Starview Capital Management LLC - now renamed CASAM Advisers - a registered investment adviser, that manages a segregated accounts platform which facilitates access to customized portfolios of a wide variety of institutional quality hedge fund managers via a sophisticated framework.
• Lyra Capital LLC, a registered investment adviser, that manages the separate account-based hedge fund investment platform used in the creation of various indexes, including the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Strategy Benchmarks and Dow Jones Hedge Fund Balanced Portfolio Indexes.
• Alternative Investment Research and Technologies, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Starview, that holds an exclusive and perpetual license with the University of Massachusetts to commercialise, maintain and distribute the CISDM Hedge Funds/CTA Database and the CISDM Hedge Fund/CTA Indices calculated from this database.

Ursa and Starview have been renamed Crédit Agricole Structured Asset Management Americas LLC (CASAM Americas) and Crédit Agricole Structured Asset Management Advisers LLC (CASAM Advisers), respectively.

As part of the integration, Garry Crowder, founder and current Chief Executive Officer of Ursa, is appointed Chief Executive Officer of CASAM Americas, Didier Centis is appointed Chief Operating Officer of CASAM Americas, and Frédéric Neefs is appointed Deputy Chief Executive Officer of CASAM Americas.

This acquisition enables CASAM to accelerate the development of its product offerings by integration of the Ursa group's portfolio of 44 alternative managed accounts and its licensing relationship with the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Indexes. The acquisition also carries a database containing more than 4000 hedge funds and fund of hedge funds.

Through this deal, CASAM now owns a completely operational and integrated company in the USA. With a total of 64 managed accounts and 10 alternative investment strategies, CASAM states its platform 'offers structurers, institutional investors and fund of fund managers a range of diversified solutions that can be adapted to their needs'.

The CASAM group assets under management represent over EUR 40 billion, of which EUR 2.1 billion is invested in alternative managed accounts.