Sidley Expands Hedge Fund Practice in London

Sidley Austin has further expanded its hedge fund practice in London by hiring a new counsel in the Investment Funds, Advisers and Derivatives practice.

Barry Breen has joined the firm’s London office and will focus his practice on hedge funds and further expand Sidley’s fund capabilities in London. "Barry is a talented and experienced hedge fund lawyer and we are pleased to have him join us to enhance our growing fund capabilities in Europe," said Bruce Gardner, head of the hedge fund practice in London.

Breen will advise clients on the organization of offshore and onshore hedge funds, including master/feeder,fund of funds and side by side investment structures, commodity pools, registered fund of funds and mutual funds, ETFs, and the registration, regulation and governance of registered management investment companies.

"I am thrilled to join a firm with such a respected and renowned global investment funds practice," said Breen. "I look forward to working with Bruce, David and the other partners in the practice to continue to build and strengthen the funds team in London, Europe and globally."

Breen previously was with Tannenbaum Helpern Syracuse & Hirschtritt LLP in the Financial Services, Hedge Funds and Capital Markets practice operating out of their New York and London offices.

Sidley has a international practice in structuring and advising investment funds and advisers. In 2006 and 2007, the Alpha Awards(TM) for hedge fund service providers ranked Sidley as the number one onshore hedge fund law firm. Additionally, in 2008, the firm was named "Investment Funds Team of the Year for the U.S." by Chambers and Partners. In 2007, Sidley also was named Investment Funds Law Firm of the Year by Asian Legal Business. The Investment Funds, Advisers and Derivatives practice group consists of more than 100 lawyers in Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Singapore and Tokyo.

Southridge Launches Atypical Market Neutral Fund

Southridge LLC, a New York financial holding company, is launching a "not as you know" market neutral fund to addd to their portfolio of funds.

The new fund, Southridge Market Neutral US LP has the capacity to grow to $1 billion, the fund will have a $500,000 investment minimum, 2/20 fees and monthly liquidity.

Ten years in the making, Southridge Market Neutral is designed and managed by Andrew G. White, CFA. "We’re quite encouraged that our new fund strongly outperformed during first half of 08, despite being a start-up in truly hostile markets. We’re even more optimistic for the future." White commented.

“We launched the fund as quantitative market neutral, but not as you know quant or market neutral," White said, "High return with low downside risk is possible if you first focus on return using objective trend-following in US large/mid cap stocks and then employ risk control including NO leverage.”

Focusing on what works and why, the strategy is objective trend-following instead of subjective mean reversion. Investing in US large/mid caps (100% long / 100% short), the fund strategy unusually uses no leverage or factor hedging. Nonetheless, risk/return profile is similar to 6:1 leveraged market neutral funds, but with a vastly smaller market footprint and black swan exposure.

Stephen Hicks, Southridge's CEO, said, “As we leverage our twelve year track record at Southridge, we look forward to further broadening our product line for our investor base and view the Southridge Market Neutral US strategy as an integral part of that mosaic.”