HedgeCo.net ( New York ) — Phil Goldstein’s activist hedge fund firm Bulldog Investors is opening its doors to non-U.S. investors for the first time. The firm will launch an offshore version of its flagship Full Value Fund on Jan. 1, General Partner Steve Samuels told AIN. The new fund is being seeded by an existing investor — a California wealth management firm that Samuels declined to identify.
Investors have inquired about an offshore fund for some time, but the California investor has offshore clients it wanted to accommodate. “They said ‘if we seed it with X amount of money will you do it?’ and that’s why we’re going to do it,” said Samuels. By getting the seed capital, the firm is able to hit the ground running instead of having to take on the legal and administrative startup costs without any guarantees. The firm is marked by San Francisco-based BlueCorner.
Strategy-wise the new fund will be identical to the onshore version, with Goldstein and Andrew Dakos the chief investors, but Samuels said Bulldog is eyeing different targets these days. “Right now we’re seeing less opportunity in operating companies,” he noted. Instead, the firm is coming full-circle to re-focus on close-end funds that trade at a discount to their underlying net-asset-value — the area where Goldstein and Samuels first cut their activist teeth in the early 1990s. There are more opportunities in this space, said Samuels, “specifically in the income area of closed-end funds.”
The firm expects a small launch “in the $10 million area,” and Samuels indicated he wanted to grow assets slowly. “We’re pretty much organic growers,” he said.
Steven Samuels
Bulldog Investors
203 222 0609
