Richard Kershaw, senior derivatives salesman at Morgan Stanley in London, has teamed up with Joost Wissink, head of equity arbitrage at BlueCrest Capital Management, to set up a hedge fund. The fund, dubbed West Harbor Capital, will trade merger arbitrage, capital structure arbitrage and other relative value and event driven strategies. The initial target size for the fund is EUR150 million (USD189 million) and BlueCrest is the seed investor, according to Kershaw.
"We will be capital structure and equity driven. We will trade swaps and futures, but will wait to see what other derivatives structures we might use in our hedging strategy," said Kershaw. "We're not debt players," he added.
Brian Byrne, senior account manager at the Citco Group, an organization made of financial service providers, has joined as both cfo and coo. Kershaw said there are also plans to hire analysts.
