CQS launches a volatility hedge fund

Hedge fund manager CQS has launched the CQS Global Volatility Fund. The fund starts with assets under management of $160 million and targets the full panoply of alternative investors.

The fund will be managed from London by senior portfolio managers Andrew Song and Amir Kooros alongside a further nine derivatives specialists. They will be supported by CQS staff in Hong Kong and New York.

The strategy aims to capitalise on equity volatility valuation anomalies within market indices and on market dislocations, plus on the volatility of individual equities throughout global stock markets. They will principally use options and futures to accomplish this. The target returns are 15% per annum and the fund charges a management fee of 2% and a performance fee of 20%.

The fund managers cannot disclose the likely volatility of the fund, nor its main service providers.

CQS launched an Asian convertible arbitrage hedge fund in 2007, named the CQS Asia Fund. That focuses on convertible bond and equity strategies, investing across Asia with a volatility bias. Alongside it stands the firmÆs flagship, globally-themed, CQS Fund. The new volatility fund will also be global in its orientation.

The Hong Kong office of CQS was established in 2005 by Brian Pohli. It has recently been on a hiring spree, bringing in Michael Schulz and Laura Hui from Lehman Brothers and David Kilgore from Barclays Capital in London.

CQS was founded in 1999 by Michael Hintze who remains CIO. He previously ran convertible bonds at Credit Suisse First Boston and before that worked at Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs.