Hermes BPK aiming to triple assets in 5 years

By Chikafumi Hodo

TOKYO | Tue Feb 8, 2011 5:20am EST

TOKYO (Reuters) - The fund of hedge funds arm of Hermes aims to boost
its assets by three times to $5 billion (3.1 billion pounds) in five
years by beating growing demand for alternative investments in
countries counting Japan, the head of the company said.

Hermes BPK is in suspense that its experience administration British
Telecom's (BT.L) (BT.L) pension scheme will help it win the
confidence of typically risk-adverse investors in Japan, the world's
following largest institutional market.

"Japanese institutional investors are very concerned as they were
scarred a bit by their experiences in 2008 (in the wake of the global
financial crisis) in the alternative industry," Matteo Perruccio,
chief executive and founding partner of Hermes BPK Partners, told
Reuters in an interview.

"Although that being said, they are smart investors and they know the
alternative space is vacant to be very fascinating in the next couple
of years."

The company, which manages more than $1.5 billion in assets in three
product classes, expects to service high amounts of money from a tiny
number of Japanese investors, Perruccio said.

Besides Japan, Hermes BPK is also focusing on drawing investors from
the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland and Australia.

Hermes BPK, established in 2008, is a partnership between its
directors and Hermes Fund Managers, an asset management group wholly
owned by the BT pension scheme. Hermes Fund Managers owns 61.5
percent and the partners hold 38.5 percent.

Source: Reuters.Com