London-based Aspect Capital, founded in 1997 by Michael Adam and Martin Lueck, two of the original founders of AHL, in addition to Anthony Todd and Eugene Lambert, have developed a
London-based Aspect Capital, founded in 1997 by Michael Adam and Martin Lueck, two of the original founders of AHL, in addition to Anthony Todd and Eugene Lambert, have developed an enviable track record in the USD250billion CTA/Managed Futures space; the biggest hedge fund asset class. The Aspect Diversified investment programme – a systematic product that uses trading algorithms to capture momentum in medium-term trends across a range of deep, liquid futures markets – is currently available to investors either through Aspect’s benchmark offshore Aspect Diversified Fund or segregated mandates (managed accounts). “All our assets though are centred around the Aspect Diversified programme,” said Aspect Capital’s Chief Commercial Officer, John Wareham (pictured), in an interview with Hedgeweek, adding that 2010 was quite a productive year for medium-term trend following. “The fund returned just under 15.5 per cent,” said Wareham. “Although difficult in H110, from August onwards performance was strong. What we were able to do was capture a range of opportunities across a range of different sectors – a large number of our stock index futures were profitable, currency pairs, agricultural commodities and precious metals: all these contracts generated strong returns.”
Aspect has a team of 115 in its London office and three in Hong Kong, but this is not to dilute the strategic intentions it places on the region. “We take a transparent, client-facing approach and have an office in Hong Kong because we want to be close to our Asian clients,” explained Wareham who, along with Aspect Capital’s CEO, Anthony Todd, makes frequent trips to the region. Wareham said that since the firm had opened the office just over two years ago, it had seen tremendous growth in its Asian client base; a market he considers to be profoundly important. “Asia Pacific represents about 25 per cent of our assets (USD4.3billion) but it’s rising rapidly,” said Wareham, explaining that the firm had had a portfolio of roughly 20 Japanese pension funds invested in the ADF for about seven years. The Hong Kong office handles client servicing through Jan Chen and Cyrus Hendry. “The team did some nice business in Taiwan, China, Japan, Singapore last year, which has been deeply encouraging,” said Wareham, who stressed the importance of a diversified client base to a mono product company like Aspect. “Australasia has been another area of growth over the last 18 months, so we’ve really seen our Asian investor base diversify both by type and by geography.”
Heading into the New Year and decade, Wareham believes the firm has real potential to more than double its assets “because we know our capacity and USD10billion is not an issue”. Much of the firm’s organic growth is likely to come from Asia. “The trickle-down opportunities are enormous,” concluded Wareham. “I expect to see the team out there grow this year. We’ve made a promising start to Asia; we’re deeply committed to building on this.”
