By Claire Makin
After years of questioning the foundations of the investment industry, Michael Azlen has clear ideas about what does and does not add value. Azlen, the executive chairman and founder of Frontier Investment Management, believes that very few managers can beat the averages after fees and costs, and that the investment world should be more honest about it.
Given this harsh reality, Frontier aims to capture the ‘betas’ of different asset classes to provide a low-cost alternative to active management.
Along the way, Frontier has created a unique hedge fund tracker product that blends synthetic replicators with single managers. “We’ve produced a way to access hedge fund returns with low cost and high liquidity and without the Madoff factor,” Azlen says. He strongly believes that alternative betas delivered in innovative ways are where the future of the industry lies.
Still relatively small, with a little...