Gottex Fund Management’s total fee-earning assets were USD8.13bn at 31 December 2009, down 1.2 per cent from USD8.23bn at 30 September 2009.

This total consisted of USD7.80bn in assets under management and Gottex Solutions Services assets of USD0.33bn.

AUM fell slightly by 2.1 per cent, which was primarily caused by outflows from Gottex’s run-off share classes, but was to a certain extent offset by subscriptions and technical factors.

Total subscriptions for the quarter amounted to USD310m, whilst outflows from run-off share classes equalled USD270m and client redemptions accounted for USD250m.

Foreign exchange added USD25m whilst rebalancing and other technical factors increased AUM by USD80m in Q4 2009. Overall net performance contributed a positive USD10m. 

Gottex has continued to return capital to redeeming investors in Gottex run-off share classes and these investors have on average received just under 70 per cent of their original redemptions in cash as at 31 December 2009, at which point in time the AUM contained in run-off share classes amounted to USD500m.

GSS further increased assets on the managed account platform with subscriptions of USD70m during Q4 2009 raising assets to USD330m.

Going into 2010 the company will introduce a deferred incentive scheme which will further align Gottex with its clients. Further emphasis will be placed on growing GSS and the Gottex multi-asset range.

At the end of 2009, Gottex commenced development of Ucits products in light of the ongoing regulatory changes and expected demand from retail and institutional investors for onshore regulated investment products.

Joachim Gottschalk, chairman and chief executive, says: “In the fourth quarter we continued the strong performance trend that started earlier in 2009, and I am very pleased to say that our core market neutral and portable alpha products have markedly outperformed their relevant indices. Investors who remained invested in hedge funds through the financial crisis have by and large recovered the vast majority of their 2008 losses, much earlier than many of those who were invested in other asset classes.

“As a result of the positive performance, we have seen increased interest by institutional investors into hedge funds in recent months and we expect to see solid inflows for the industry as the year progresses. Some of the less liquid strategies such as relative value and convertible arbitrage did extremely well in 2009 and the environment remains good for 2010. We believe these will attract additional allocations from institutional investors this year.”