Event-driven strategy is the top pick to perform best in both 2006 and 2007 by European hedge fund managers, a new Lipper survey has found. According to the poll, about 27% of respondents said event-driven should grow by more than 11% this year, while 21.82% expected a similar repeat performance by the strategy next year. The research company suggests the responses reflected the fact that at the time of the survey, event-driven was already above 9% YTD. Looking ahead to 2007, following event-driven in the race to top performing spot are long/short equity, favored by 16.36% of those polled; emerging markets (12.73%); and convertible arbitrage (10.91%). Dedicated short bias, equity market neutral and options arbitrager registered nary a ripple among respondents. In other findings:
- More than one-quarter of those questioned predicted that new European hedge fund launches in the next half year will be in long/short equity, followed by multi-strategy funds (15.63%).
- Nine out of 10 said they monitor their global portfolios with “systematic risk assessment techniques.
- Nearly half (46.15%) believe pension funds should put more than 11% of their assets in hedge funds, while about 27% suggested more than 9% would be appropriate.
- Only 3.64% of those questioned named long-only as the best performer for 2006, yet four out of 10 polled expected the strategy to produce more than 11% -- and at the time of the survey, its year-to-date percentage was less than 2%.
