BNY Mellon Absolute Return fund hits first landmark

The BNY Mellon Absolute Return fund has hit the UK$100m mark within the first three months since launch.

A sub-fund of the BNY Mellon’s Dublin-domiciled UCITS III fund range, the fund is managed by Insight Investment.

Paul Feeney, Head of International Distribution at BNY Mellon Asset Management, comments, "We anticipated a very positive response from the market to this new fund and we have not been disappointed. Absolute return funds are in strong demand this year as a result of equity markets remaining highly volatile and global economies continuing to deliver negative news.

Our new offering is highly regarded by the industry as a result of it being a long short, pan-European investment strategy that aims to deliver positive returns in all market conditions over a 12 month period by employing a paired trade approach. The experience of the specialist equity team at Insight Investment and their consistently strong investment performance track record are key attractions for the fund."

The fund's investment process is grounded in the paired-trade approach which Insight's specialist equity team has applied within its Absolute Insight UK Equity Market Neutral Strategy since May 2005. The fund can also take large investment positions and directional market exposure to capture upside opportunities.

As well as the dynamic management of net and gross exposure and daily liquidity, the managers employ a stop-loss discipline on each investment position to help contain downside risk and drawdowns. The fund aims to identify pricing anomalies and profit from those opportunities through carefully constructed investment positions.

Unwanted risks are hedged out. Although the fund has no geographical constraints, initial focus has been on pan-Europe, with a bias towards the UK.

The fund was launched on 31 January 2011 and has a minimum initial investment of £5,000. There is an annual fee of 1.5% and a performance fee of 15%.