The collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 almost took Amber Capital with it. But the New York City hedge fund, founded by Joseph Oughourlian and Michel Brogard, has been working hard to resolve the ensuing mess and now hopes to rebuild with the formation of two new funds.
Joseph Oughourlian
Amber has recently opened to outside investors a new Europe-focused event-driven fund which follows the same strategy as the flagship fund being unwound. Separately, Amber plans to launch an Italian onshore long/short equity vehicle from an expanded base in Milan.
Amber, an event-driven operation that spun out from Société Générale in 2005 and was running some $7.5 billion at its peak, was one of the principal hedge fund victims of Lehman’s failure—with about $900 million of its assets of $2.9 billion stuck in the European arm of Lehman when it went under last year.
The new fund—called Amber Global Opportunities—manages about $100 million. It came into being as a result of a large Italian institutional investor deciding, after a long due diligence process, to put money with the firm just as the Lehman events were unfolding. It has performed well to date, having gained about 24% net of fees since inception in January.
Meanwhile, Amber has received Bank of Italy authorization to launch an Italian equity fund that will be run by Marco Cipelletti out of Milan. The Italian strategy will focus on traditional long/short equity rather than event investing and will be targeted to domestic institutional investors and family groups.
“We see so much opportunity,” says Gilles Fretigne, a managing partner of Amber Capital Investment Management in Europe. “People are very underallocated to European event-driven and the space has been decimated, with massive outflows of capital and the banks pulling out of prop trading.”
Nick Evans
