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With the alternative asset management industry continuing to face challenges and critics from all quarters, Jonathan Lourie, co-founder, chief executive officer and chief investment officer at Cheyne Capital, used his keynote speech - which rounded off the first day of this year's summit - to make the case for hedge fund investing.
Prior to co-founding Cheyne in 2000 alongside president and director of research Stuart Fiertz, Lourie worked from 1985 at Morgan Stanley. There, both Lourie and Fiertz cut their teeth managing convertible bonds and credit for high net worth individual investors.
Lourie said Cheyne was "honoured" to be part of what he called the exciting growth of the hedge fund industry's prestigious "class of 2000" - market participants who had the vision to be of institutional size and to build major infrastructure from the moment they started, and which they have maintained over the past 17 years. This select group of successful hedge firms, which launched around the turn of the millennium and who went on to dominate the landscape, includes Marshall Wace, Brevan Howard, GLG, Bluecrest, Gartmore, BlueBay, Lansdowne, CQS, TCI and Henderson.
"Hedge fund investing is to a large extent path-dependent - the success of a firm is only ultimately reliant on its performance. Clearly the early participants in the European hedge fund industry are all intact thanks not only to above average performance, but more importantly delivering investors their early promise."
He observed how the industry performed successfully through the early 2000s downturn, with few hedge funds of any repute losing money during that period, while by comparison the stock market plummeted by 50% from peak to trough. He also noted how the period between 2003 and 2007, fuelled by the credit bubble, created...