AI Hedge Awards 2017

Acquisition International - Hedge Fund Awards 2017 57 Meliora Capital SA Best for Short-Term Trading Strategies 2017 Meliora Capital SA Company: Meliora Capital SA Phone: +41 21 550 12 69 E-mail: [email protected] Web: https://melioracapital.ch/ MELIORA CAPITAL HF170034 Meliora Capital is an asset management firm that uses systematic investment strategies to deliver strong risk- adjusted absolute returns that are uncorrelated to the other markets and investment strategies. We caught up with CEO Pablo Albrecht to learn more about the firm and this innovative investment strategy. Meliora Capital specialize in short- term trading strategies on the most liquid listed future markets. The firm’s flagship Commodity Absolute Return program only holds positions throughout the day and has no over- night exposure. Pablo provides more detail on this unique approach, which has recently been re-incorporated into the firm’s strategy due to its previous success. “The Commodity Absolute Return program is available in segregated managed accounts (SMA) and was initially developed by our CIO in 1997. The program was run between 1997 and 2009 with a successful track-record and was re-launched in 2014 as the firm’s flagship strategy. “We are a technology company at heart and automate most of our processes. A task that would require a team of five a decade ago can now be done over-night within a few minutes by a computer. Our complete infrastructure is run in an automated environment, allowing us to spend more time with the clients and provide investment strategies at a lower cost.” The nature of the firm’s investment strategy is in itself a niche approach, and as such Meliora Capital only have a very few competitors and still benefit from having an uncorrelated performance stream. Looking ahead, Pablo emphasises that despite various challenges in the UK market such as Brexit, the firm has its sights set firmly on achieving a presence in the country. “We are in the process to relocate to London in order to better serve our current client base.” Mori Capital Management Best Emerging Market Asset Manager - Malta & Best Emerging Europe Equity Fund (3 Years): Mori Ottoman Fund A EUR Mori Capital Management Company: Mori Capital Mgmt Address: Regent House, Office 35, Bisazza Street, Sliema, SLM 1640, Malta Phone: +356 2033 0110 Fax: +356 27 480 008 Email: [email protected] Web: www.mori-capital.com HF170063 Mori Capital Management Ltd is an independent asset management company owned by its management specialising in Emerging European markets. We interviewed Portfolio Manager Aziz Unan to learn more. Mori draws on the vast experience of its founders and investment team, many of whom have been working in the industry for over 20 years. The firm’s two emerging European funds were originally called Griffin Eastern European Fund and Griffin Ottoman Fund whose roots date back as far as 1998. These two funds were carved out and renamed to Mori by Aziz Unan in order to emphasise his over two-decade long experience in the niche markets of emerging Europe. The firm’s consistent bottom-up stock picking with active beta management approach to investing in a niche asset class has attracted a variety of investors, as Aziz outlines. “Here at Mori we have an established investor base which is balanced between retail, institutional and family office investors based predominantly in German speaking countries, many of whom followed us when we broke away from our former parent company and started afresh in 2015. “For these clients we provide an alternative UCITS fund which utilises index derivatives and foreign- exchange hedging actively. Our investment style revolves around bottom up stock picking with a macro overlay, whereby we try to select the highest quality, best managed businesses in emerging Europe and purchase their stocks at a discount to our intrinsic value estimates. Our business model is geared towards the long term but we have a rigorous beta overlay and actively hedge against the region’s currencies in order to ensure that our investors are not exposed to excessive volatility.” Ultimately, Mori is dedicated to operating in this niche investment sector owing to the vast growth potential it identifies there, as Aziz concludes. “Moving forward we remain passionate about investing in emerging European markets because of the various growth prospects we foresee in this region. Many of the emerging European markets have positive demographics with highly underpenetrated sectors in all parts of their economies. Emerging Europe is arguably the least leveraged region as a whole compared to many other regions that are facing a big debt burden. “In addition, with over 50% of the world’ remaining proven oil reserves and three quarters of the global gas resources the region is the world’s energy hub. Thus, geopolitics continues to play a vital role, it also brings many opportunities to obtain mispriced assets.”