Hong Kong hedge fund Black’s Link Capital is returning funds to investors after just one year in the game. Black’s Link was an Asia-focused event-driven hedge fund manager that was founded by co-chief investment officers Anthony Correa and Hani Abuali in the first quarter of 2010.
Both men came from Polygon and were accompanied by a five-strong trading team from the same firm. Before Polygon, Correa worked at Nomura and Abuali was in the prop trading department of Morgan Stanley.
Sources have confirmed the return of capital. We asked Correa and Abuali for their comments, but at the time of publishing they had not contacted us.
While hedge fund launches continue to proliferate in Asia, a number that seemed set fair have not endured. Of late these have included Ashutosh Sinha at Amoeba Capital, ShafiQ Karmali's Cypress Lane and DragonBack Capital.
The reasons for closure vary. Hedge funds that have been around for several years have been hit either by redemptions or performance concerns. Younger hedge funds – those that have been launched in the past two years – tend to shut down because of difficulties in raising capital to predicted targets.
Another scenario is that a hedge fund runs hot with capital-raising, but is then left as a wall flower. In that situation it can be very hard to reverse the perception.
In the present environment, fund managers don't appear to get the same length of time to build and make an impression.
