Hedge fund manager Chris Rokos is seeking to raise as much as $2 billion to boost assets at his London investment firm following a lucrative year for investors, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Rokos, 46, will reopen his hedge fund on Feb. 1 and expects to raise the capital within a month, the person said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The new money will boost assets under management at Rokos Capital Management LLP to about $6 billion. A spokesman for the firm declined to comment.
The money manager opened for business in September 2015 but stopped accepting fresh capital at the start of February after raising $3.5 billion. It was one of the largest startups in the industry worldwide and the assets have since risen to about $4 billion following the fund’s 9 percent return through Sept. 23, compared with a 0.2 percent gain in the HFRI Macro Total Index in the first 10 months of the year.
The money raising plan by Rokos, who previously co-founded Brevan Howard Asset Management, come amid a widespread backlash by investors this year against poor returns and the high fees charged by money managers. A total of $60 billion has been pulled from hedge funds and cash is being moved away from big-name traders to computer-driven funds.
Rokos, whose initial investors include Blackstone Group, is among a small number of macro hedge funds making a profit this year. Some of the industry’s best-known investment firms such as Brevan Howard and Tudor Investment Corp. have lost money and been forced to cut fees.
The Brevan Howard Master Fund lost 2.7 percent through October, following two successive annual declines, a person said earlier this month.
Brevan Howard has a “financial interest” in the venture that Rokos manages with Borislav Vladimirov, his former colleague at Brevan Howard, and Stuart Riley, formerly Asia-Pacific co-head of macro trading at Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.
