As more SA pension funds are considering whether to include hedge funds in their investments, it is useful to see the attitudes of their international counterparts in the recent KPMG report, “Hedge funds: a catalyst reshaping global investments”.
In many ways our funds here were exposed much earlier because asset managers have used hedge funds as an integral part of their international investment strategy. When firms such as Coronation and Liberty Asset Management (now Stanlib) began to invest their clients’ funds overseas in 1995, hedge funds were just starting to get into the pension fund market in the US, and were showing strong, consistent returns at a time when international equity markets were starting to look expensive. It was logical for these fund managers to make hedge funds a significant part of their strategy.
