Ex-BNP Paribas managing directors launch new hedge fund
Gerardine Davies, the former head of UK investment management at BNP Paribas who left the firm after just nine months in November 2012, has re-emerged in the City, launching her own hedge fund alongside two other senior investment bankers.
Davies has launched PCM Partners LLP, which describes itself as a ‘low-risk diversified investment’ vehicle, along with Arjan Verbeek, who was head of flow asset backed security and covered bond structuring at BNP Paribas, and Hamish Peacocke, who was most recently a director in Credit Suisse’s structured bonds desk, but formerly worked for BNP’s securitisation desk.
Davies joined BNP Paribas after a two-year hiatus from the industry in February 2012, but had left the firm by November. PCM Partners represents her first FCA-authorised role since that time.
Prior to joining BNP Paribas, Davies was co-head of retail property at Aegon Asset Management, but was once responsible for a £4.2bn open-ended property fund at Morley Fund Management during boom years up to 2007 – the largest such fund in the UK.
Verbeek had worked at BNP Paribas for nearly seven years before his exit in July last year. Before this, he was a director at Barclays Capital for just over three years.
PCM Partners’ launch suggests that the team is capitalising on hedge funds’ new-found appetite to buy discounted property loans from banks including those that have been packaged into asset-backed bonds.
Ellington Management Group is one U.S hedge fund heading to Europe and hiring to capitalise on the disposal of asset-backed securities by banks, and MKP Capital has also been recruiting. Meanwhile, Alistair Lumsden, who previously ran the $2.3bn asset-backed securities fund at CQS, has launched East Lodge Capital Partners, a $250m hedge fund focused on the asset class.
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