| Jacob Gottlieb |
After posting strong gains in its multistrategy fund and boosting assets by 75% in 2010, Jacob Gottlieb’s Visium Asset Management is getting ready to bolster its portfolio management team.
Visium Global, a multistrategy fund launched in October 2007, returned a stunning 113.33% in 2009 and a sizable 20.05% last year. The firm recently hired Rahul Mepani as a portfolio manager for the multistrategy fund and expects at least two more portfolio managers to join this quarter. The New York firm’s flagship, the health care–focused Visium Balanced equity fund, manages $1.9 billion. Visium manages $2.6 billion overall.
Visium Global employs 11 portfolio managers, and the firm plans to continue adding portfolio managers strategically for the fund. Last year, the firm engaged a recruiter and received more than 400 résumés. Mepani, a long/short value portfolio manager, previously held the same title at Access Global Partners. The fund manages $169 million.
The search for portfolio managers is part of an initiative to build the firm’s infrastructure and raise assets for the newer multistrategy fund, as Visium Balanced is closed to new investors. Last year, Visium created a new risk management position, hiring Goldman Sachs alum Amol Sahasrabudhe as the firm’s chief risk officer. Sahasrabudhe is responsible for risk management across the firm’s menu of funds, with a focus on Visium Global. Robert Kim joined last June as director of research for the global multistrategy fund and manager of a new tax-efficient hedge fund launched earlier this year.
The decision to expand coincides with the firm’s best year on record for asset growth. Visium boosted its assets in 2010 from $1.5 billion to $2.6 billion, according to AR’s Billion Dollar Club. The firm’s assets have now surpassed their previous peak of $2.2 billion. Visium’s assets fell to $1.01 billion after investors redeemed following the financial crisis of 2008. The firm chose to let investors out of its funds rather than impose gates.
Visium Balanced returned 24.44% in 2010. Gottlieb’s newer version of that fund, which differs only in that it does not invest in small caps, struggled in comparison. Visium Institutional Partners Fund was launched in June of last year and ended 2010 down 1.35%, but is up 1.99% through February. The Visium Credit Opportunity Fund, launched in May 2009, also contributed to the firm’s asset growth, gaining 31.67% in 2010.
Gottlieb started Visium in late 2005. A medical doctor and former analyst with Merlin BioMed, Gottlieb was a top performer and chief of health care at Balyasny Asset Management before starting Visium.
