25 May 2011
Investcorp, the alternative asset manager, and Prosiris Capital Management, a New York based hedge fund manager led by former Goldman Sachs managing director Reza Ali, today announced that they have formed a strategic partnership that will provide Prosiris with support and stable growth capital while giving Investcorp and its investors access to a specialized credit oriented strategy.
Prosiris will become the latest investment advisor on Investcorp’s Single Manager Platform, which has a total of $1.6 billion in client and proprietary assets under management. Investcorp will provide Prosiris with an initial investment and will also provide marketing and operational risk management support and oversight. Investcorp generally provides an initial investment ranging from $50 million to $100 million in funds to be managed by the single managers.
Prosiris specializes in monetizing long and short investments within the structured credit markets by managing portfolios of structured finance assets, corporate credits and credit derivatives. The Prosiris team has extensive experience in structured credit trading, credit analysis, structured finance technology and legal and regulatory analysis of credit products.
“We are fortunate that as markets continue to recover we are finding opportunities to partner with talented investment teams with specialized skills and expertise such as Prosiris,” said Deepak Gurnani, Investcorp’s head of hedge funds and Chief Investment Officer. “Investcorp has a deep understanding of structured credit having first invested in structured credit in late 2006 in the short sub-prime strategy. The relationship with Prosiris allows us and our investors to capitalize on the opportunities in structured credit, a market where the barriers to entry are disproportionately high relative to an estimated $1 trillion market.”
Reza Ali, who is Prosiris’s Chief Executive Officer, has investment industry experience spanning 19 years during which he managed assets through some of the credit market’s most significant moments of upheaval, including the Russian debt crisis in 1998 and the subsequent bailout of Long-term Capital Management, as well as the US credit crisis that began in 2007.
Most recently, Mr. Ali headed the Americas Principal Funding and Investments Group at Goldman Sachs, where, from 2006 to 2009, he successfully managed a multi-billion dollar portfolio of credit and structured finance assets and credit derivatives. He previously worked at Merrill Lynch where he created the firm’s structured credit proprietary trading desk, and also headed structuring for credit derivatives in Europe.
“Reza is one of the most experienced and proven managers in the complex credit and structured finance space,” said Nick Vamvakas, head of development for Investcorp’s single manager platform. “By our estimates, his team at Prosiris could manage a multi-billion dollar portfolio given their range of skills and the opportunity set in the market today.”
Prosiris will be a six person team at launch, but plans to make additions in the near-term. The investment team has worked together on average for more than seven years in past positions.
“We have found a rare partner in Investcorp, one with the wisdom and judgment of a hedge fund investor as well as a seeder,” said Prosiris’s Reza Ali. “Pairing their investment and operational risk management infrastructure with our expertise in credit and structured finance will create a bridge to institutional investors that is uncommon for an early stage investment fund.”