By Claire Makin
When Swedish insurer Folksam decided to offer a hedge fund option to pension savers, senior adviser Göran Emtesjö flew to London to talk to some global fund providers. To his surprise, none of them was interested in teaming up with Folksam to offer the product.
So what were the sticking points? Unsurprisingly, fees and a lack of upfront capital commitments, it turns out – but also a resistance to UCITS. “They said, ‘UCITS III is not a real product; we’ve been running hedge funds for 20 years’,” Emtesjö recalls.
In the end, Folksam looked closer to home and chose to work with a local fund of hedge funds group, Optimized Portfolio Management. Stockholm-based OPM is a research-driven house founded in 2003 by Simon Reinius, and is now 50%-owned by Carnegie Investment Bank. It runs more than $400 million for pension funds, endowments, private banks...