Weekly Update

Aster Capital founder to relocate to Dubai

Nabil Oujjane, the founder of Aster Capital Management, a multi-strategy hedge fund firm that manages funds for Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, is relocating from London to Dubai. This move places him among the growing number of portfolio managers operating from the emirate, as reported by Bloomberg.

According to the report, Oujjane and four colleagues plan to establish a new office in Dubai within the year. Oujjane, a former money manager at BlueCrest Capital Management, leads a quantitative equity strategy and manages a team of 14 people across offices in London and New York. The London office will remain operational, according to a source. Dubai's strategic timezone and favorable tax regime have attracted several major hedge fund firms, including Izzy Englander’s Millennium Management, Michael Platt’s BlueCrest, and Balyasny Asset Management. Meanwhile, Brevan Howard Asset Management now manages more funds from neighboring Abu Dhabi than from any other global location.

Brevan Howard’s Abu Dhabi headcount hits 100

Brevan Howard, a leading global macro hedge fund, now employs 100 staff in its Abu Dhabi office, becoming the first global hedge fund in the United Arab Emirates to reach this milestone, according to a Financial News report.

Since its opening last February with just a few employees, Brevan Howard’s office in the Abu Dhabi Global Market has experienced rapid growth. The report confirmed that the Abu Dhabi office houses portfolio managers, quantitative researchers, and analysts, along with 10 members of the firm’s crypto unit, Brevan Howard Digital.

London Hedge Fund Capula Management Invests $418M in Bitcoin ETFs

According to reports, a prominent European hedge fund has accumulated over $418 million in spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds, as revealed in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Capula Management, a London-based hedge fund managing approximately $30 billion in assets, has acquired 4,022,346 shares of Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust (and 7,419,108 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF. At Monday's market close, Capula’s holdings were valued at approximately $190.3 million in FBTC and $228.2 million in IBIT, totaling $418.5 million.

The SEC approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETFs in January, offering investors a secure and regulated way to gain exposure to the volatile cryptocurrency market. These ETFs have been highly successful, drawing significant institutional interest. Industry experts had predicted that such funds would facilitate easier access to Bitcoin for institutions, which has proven to be accurate. Collectively, these ETFs now hold tens of billions of dollars in Bitcoin, as investment interest has surged in recent months.

Hedge funds revive interest in portable alpha strategies

Several high-profile hedge funds, including Balyasny, Man Group, Winton, and Bridgewater Associates, are renewing their interest in portable alpha strategies, which aim to "decouple" alpha from beta to achieve market-beating returns, according to Business Insider. Portable alpha strategies seek to enhance returns by combining exposure to a benchmark index, like the S&P 500 or MSCI World, with actively managed alpha from sources such as systematic equities, commodity trading advisors, and multi-strategy approaches. The goal is to achieve benchmark performance with additional uncorrelated returns without significantly increasing risk and expenses.

Kim Shaw, global co-head of prime brokerage at Morgan Stanley, said, “Your goal is to get punchier returns in a higher-rate environment.” Due to increased client inquiries, Morgan Stanley’s prime brokerage team released a white paper on portable alpha in May. The topic was a focal point at the bank’s capital introduction conference on July 31.