London-based Gartmore Investment Management is preparing two fixed-income hedge funds and has hired three senior bond professionals to run them, says Roger Bartley, global cio, fixed income. The first fund, which is slated to debut at the end of the second quarter, will be a global credit hedge fund run by Varkki Chacko and Mark Wauton.
A relative value credit hedge fund will be launched afterwards and will be run by Robert Crossley and Bob Jolly. Bartley says the hedge funds are being created as part of the firms overall hedge program and, in the case of the global credit fund, because there are not many funds in that sector. Currently, Gartmore has nine hedge funds. The initial size of the new funds has not yet been decided, says Bartley.
Chacko joins Gartmore from Goldman Sachs in London where he was a managing director and head of global credit strategy. Wauton comes over from UBS Investment Management in London, where he had been a managing director and head of European fixed income. Crossley joins from Cargill in London.