Blackstone plans to close a fund that exposes investors to a variety of hedge funds and trading strategies after assets fell almost 90% in four years, the company told Reuters on Tuesday.
The story first appeared in the Financial Times.
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The U.S.-based asset manager said it had informed clients after it decided in October that its Blackstone Diversified Multi-Strategy fund would close at the end of the year.
The fund, which represents a 0.5% portion of Blackstone's hedge fund operation, reported a 2% decline in returns from the beginning of 2020 until the end of last month, the company confirmed.
"This is a small, legacy fund of around $200 million," a Blackstone spokesperson said in an emailed statement. The statement said that since hiring new leadership in 2021, Blackstone's fund had outperformed an average global stock and bond portfolio, returning 4.5% to investors, compared with a loss of 4.6% on an average so-called 60/40 portfolio.
"We are in talks with clients to move their capital to newer strategies that offer greater flexibility than the current structure allows," Blackstone said.
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Assets under management in the fund peaked at 1.7 billion pounds ($2.12 billion) during the last quarter of 2019. But that had dropped to 190 million pounds, according to the latest fund holdings provided by Kepler Absolute Hedge.
The fund employs a European legal structure called Ucits - Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities - which allows retail investors access, but also restricts the amount of risk the fund can undertake.