Morgan Stanley and Algebris launch Ucits III fund MS Algebris Global Financials Ucits

Morgan Stanley and investment manager Algebris are launching a Ucits
III fund under Morgan Stanley's Ucits Irish umbrella FundLogic
Alternatives.

Morgan Stanley has teamed up with Davide Serra and Eric Halet,
founding partners of Algebris Investments, to launch the long/short
equity fund with estimated assets under management (AUM) of €15m.

The MS Algebris Global Financials Ucits fund continues in the same
vein as the Algebris Indus Select Asia Pacific Fund by offering daily
liquidity.

David Armstrong, managing director of fund-linked business at Morgan
Stanley, said the launch was a response to "growing demand from
investors to access absolute return strategies in a regulated,
transparent and liquid format".

According to Morgan Stanley, daily liquidity is hard to come by and is
only offered by a minority of managers, contributing to the fund's
appeal.
Manuel Prenant, Morgan Stanley's EMEA head of distribution of the
Ucits III platform, explained that Morgan Stanley's aim was "to come
up with a number of differentiating funds to find a way for investors
to add diversification to their Ucits allocation already."
Most of the managers will be long/short equity and within that
strategy, "we have a lot of sector-specialised funds and managers that
focus on non European markets," he said.

Prenant explains that Algebris was chosen due to its financial
expertise. "We have several buckets of sector specialised strategies
that we want to partner up with managers: financials, real estate,
technology and healthcare. Within financials in Europe, Algebris is an
obvious candidate given the background of Davide Serra," he said.
Davide Serra was a financial analyst at UBS for five years before
moving to Morgan Stanley as managing director of its European/global
banks team from 2001 to 2006. Eric Halet was co-head of Detusche
Bank's European banks team before becoming associate partner of
Wellington Management from 1999 to 2006.

The pair plan to offer an early bird share class for a limited time
period with management and performance fees of 1% and 10%. Thereafter
fees will rise to 1.5% and 20% for institutional investors and 2% and
20% for retail investors. All share classes will be offered in euro,
sterling, Swiss franc, US dollar [1]s, Singapore dollars and Swedish
krona.

The fund will be targeted to European investors and interest has so
far been stimulated predominantly in Italy, France, Spain and the UK.
The fund will be audited by Ernst & Young. Its administrator is
Northern Trust Fund Administration Services (Ireland) and the
custodian is Northern Trust Fiduciary Services (Ireland).

The first fund launched in Morgan Stanley's Ucits III umbrella was the
MS PSAM Global Event UCITS Fund with $54m AUM. This was followed by
Salar Convertible Absolute Return Fund (AUM $63m) and Indus Select
Asia Pacific Fund (AUM $11m).

Algebris Investments currently manages approximately $1.5 billion of
assets under management, has offices in London, New York and will open
in Singapore this year.

Source: HedgeFundsReview.Com