Hedge Fund Awards 2015 www.acquisition-intl.com 10 Best in Frontier Market Investing - New York, Emerging Manager of the Year - Cayman Islands, Frontier Markets Hedge Fund of the Year - Cayman Islands & Best Frontier-Market Focused Fund (Since Inception) LR Global LR Global is a boutique frontier markets specialist founded in 1997 as part of the Rockefeller family office. Headquartered in New York, the firm has a research centre in Vietnam and an asset management company in Bangladesh. “What makes LR Global unique is its institutionalised investment process designed to minimise biases and information asymmetries through a systematic approach to gathering and analysing the full frontier markets opportunity set,” says Michael St. Germain, Director of Business Development. LR Global first started a frontier fund with seeding from its found- ers, the Rockefeller family, Jack Nash, and Leon Levey (founders of Oppenheimer & Co. and Odyssey Partners). “LR Global quickly achieved international brand recognition as a result of strong per- formance, a steadfast commitment to fundamental analysis and an extensive network of well-respected contacts and relationships,” says St. Germain. “LR Global grew its assets to nearly US$1bn, before the unfortunate deaths of our original seed investors and co - founder. The ensuing fund redemptions, approximately 50% of our assets under management, were compounded by the global financial crisis, which catalysed the redemptions of our remaining asset base. This led to the winding-down of the strategy in 2009.” LR Global’s 13 years of frontier markets experience at that point provided the necessary insight to re-design an institutionalised invest- ment process and infrastructure specifically tailored to these markets. “With this experience, and the development of our new infrastructure, investment process, and proprietary frontier markets database, LR Global re-launched its frontier markets strategy in January 2012,” St. Germain says. “LR Global is truly unique in that we were one of the first institutional investors in frontier markets, pre-dating the formalisation of the asset class,” he continues. “Our record of success in frontier markets, a mar- ket segment which many investors are looking to enter for the first time, provides unparalleled experience which we view as a core strength.” On the surface, LR Global’s strategy may appear like any other long-biased frontier fund, says Germain. “However, what makes us unique is our institutionalised investment process designed to mini- mise biases and information asymmetries by systematically monitoring and analysing the full frontier markets opportunity set.” Of course, the challenges involved in gathering and processing intelli- gence from many diverse frontier markets are substantial. “As one can imagine, there is a tremendous amount of moving parts when covering more than 50 markets,” St. Germain says. “The constantly-changing economic, political, industry and corporate dynamics all need to be identified and analysed as to their potential impact on the portfolio and new opportunities. Without an infrastructure design to assimilate the continuous stream of news flow, a frontier manager is easily inundated with noise or must accept significant blind spots. “Our solution to this information challenge is to attack the challenge in numbers. For a boutique-specialist manager, the AUM constraints of the asset class place limitations on staffing a large team of research analysts out of New York or London. However, we have done as many multi-national corporates have in tapping the low-cost, highly edu- cated labour available in frontier markets to build a team of analysts to help us tackle the informational challenges of the asset class. This team, primarily based out of our Vietnam research centre, has allowed us to build systems tailored to frontier markets well as well as an institutionalised investment process. Company: LR Global Frontier Fund, Ltd. Name: Michael St.Germain Email:
[email protected] Web: http://lrglobal.com Address: 430 Park Avenue, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10022 Phone: +1 212-821-1412 Fact File LR Global LR Global, which has won four awards in this year’s Hedge Fund Awards, has, since its inception in 1997, achieved in- ternational brand recognition as a result of strong performance, a steadfast commitment to fundamental analysis and an extensive network of well-respected contacts and relationships. Michael St. Germain, Director of Business Development, filled us in on the secret to the firm’s runaway success