For all its powerhouse prominence in the European and global economies and the rich diversity of its industrial landscape, Germany remains a relative backwater for hedge fund investing – either for large multi-strategy and global operations, or for more specialist firms.
This is particularly the case on the event-driven side, where substantial cultural barriers and political hostilities appear to remain for what are often seen in Germany as short-termist and overly aggressive Anglo-Saxon investment approaches – a view famously encapsulated by the description some years back of hedge funds and private equity groups as “locusts”.
So the launch of a new European event-driven fund that is specifically targeting German-speaking countries – and which is backed with seed capital of some €200 million by a group of German and Swiss entrepreneurs – is a rare and fairly significant event in itself.
London-based Astellon Capital Partners, which launched this month, is the creation...