Asian Investor – The Shaka Japan fund has been launched in New York by hedge fund manager Shaka Capital Management. It is a new start-up, launched in January of this year with partners’ capital, and has an estimated capacity of $1 billion.
Arif Imam is Shaka’s business manager and is a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, responsible for global distribution of Japanese equities.
The portfolio manager is Alexandre de Bethmann who formerly worked at Federated Global and TIAA-CREF.
Shaka’s trader is Douglas Butcher, who was also a managing director at Morgan Stanley where he handled client trading for Japanese equities.
Target return is 12-15% per year on a Sharpe Ratio of 1.2 to 1.5. It is a Japan-only long/short equity fund concentrating on the top 250 stocks in that market. The focus on large-cap stocks is in part because of the very liquid state of the short borrow that lends to running a truly efficient hedged fund.
