Chris Morgan Jones, 38, may not look like a private detective, but he knows how to gather market intelligence. For the past 11 years, he worked for global risk consulting firm Kroll, overseeing operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Now he’s applying his skills at Morgan Dale Capital, the new London-based hedge fund he co-founded that specializes in emerging markets. He thought of fusing Kroll’s on-the-ground due diligence with long-short equity investing in late 2007, when he and pal Ashley Dale, 41, a former long-short equity portfolio manager for London-based GLS Capital, were discussing the challenge of gathering data in faraway, opaque markets. They teamed up with Alistair Candlish, an emerging-markets specialist at London-based hedge fund firm BlueCrest Capital Management, to launch the business early last month. “We tend to use political consultants, strategy consultants, financial journalists and former intelligence agents — people who understand their territory extremely well and enjoy an intellectual challenge,” says Morgan Jones.
