Emeralt Investments has launched its new Opal Fund in its range of Eastern Europe hedge funds.

Opal will take liquid long and short positions in Russian/CIS equities. The fund’s investment process is built on fundamental bottom-up stock picking in combination with a business oriented macro analysis.

The objective of Opal is to provide its investors with strong positive performance which is uncorrelated to equity markets. Risk-adjusted returns are expected to be superior to that of a traditional equity portfolio. 

The new fund will be managed by Johan Ekström, who has been recruited from Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s largest privately owned banking groups. Ekström has ten years of fund management experience and worked together with Emeralt founders Daniel Dinef and Mats Wandrell at Swedbank Robur prior to his career at Alfa Bank.

Opal will focus particularly on investment opportunities beyond the oil and gas industry, which today dominates the Russian equity market.

Opal is being launched with significant seed capital from a Swedish investment company. Citibank has been appointed as the prime broker for the new fund and FAST Ltd is the fund administrator.

“During the past decade anyone could make money investing in anything in Russia. That era is now behind us,” says Ekström. “However, Russia remains an under-analysed and misunderstood market. With a disciplined view and a systematic analysis we believe Opal can generate a superior risk adjusted return vis-à-vis Russia long-only funds and global emerging markets hedge funds.”

“We are very proud to welcome Johan Ekström to our fund management team,” says Carl Meurling, chief executive of Emeralt Investments. “We strongly believe in the combination of Johan’s award-winning fund management skills and Emeralt’s tried and tested platform for absolute returns.”