A handful of fixed-income veterans have joined OTA Asset Management as part of the firm's plans to launch a hedge fund next month. The asset manager is starting a hedge fund with $80 million in seed capital that will open to outside investors in October, according to Brian Meath, president in Purchase, N.Y. He said the fund will focus on capital structure arbitrage, credit derivatives and emerging market fixed-income investments. The fund plans to add mortgage-backed securities to the strategy later in the year.
Among those joining to manage the fund are James Prusko, head of high-grade credit at Putnam Investments in Boston and in charge of more than $20 billion in high-grade corporate bonds; Tom Rutlidge, capital structure arbitrage trader at Boldwater Capital Management in Boston, and Sara Zervos, senior financial economist in the financial sector operations and policy division at the World Bank. Prusko will be a strategist for OTA's new fund and will oversee risk management. Rutlidge will focus on capital structure arbitrage and Zervos will manage the emerging market investments.
The minimum account size for OTA's fund is $5 million and Meath said he expects to raise $600 million. Goldman Sachs is the prime broker.
