Geneva Capital Partners, a European high-yield credit-focused family office founded by former RBS principal strategies head Steven Behr, is opening up to outside money.

Established by Behr as a family office in 2013, GCP runs a long/short high-yield opportunistic strategy trading corporate credit. The London-based firm currently has USD18.7 million in assets under management.

The firm takes a bottom-up, research-driven approach to credit investing, running a highly-diversified portfolio comprising 55 positions across Europe.

Behr’s decision to come out of retirement to manage external capital follows several years of strong performance for GCP’s strategy. The fund has outperformed its benchmark with an average annualised return of 12 per cent over the past five years, and in 2020 the fund generated a stellar annual gain of more than 29 per cent.

The new credit fund launches with target gross returns of 11 per cent, and will look to capitalise on an assortment of credit market opportunities amid expected further yield compression and more refinancing into lower coupon structures.

Prior to launching Geneva Capital, CEO and portfolio manager Behr spent more than eight years at RBS, latterly as head of its principal strategies group having also set up its USD10 billion proprietary long/short credit trading business. A financial markets veteran of more than 25 years, Behr earlier had stints at Barclays Investment Bank and Nomura in the late 1990s.