Duet Group, a London-based alternative asset manager, has appointed Ulrik Fugmann and Edward Lees as senior managing directors and co-chief investment officers of the Duet Natural Resources fund.
The fund is long-short equity strategy investing in equities across oil and gas, metals and mining and agriculture sectors.
The appointments follow Duet Group’s recent acquisition of North Shore Partners, a global equity natural resources asset manager co-founded by Fugmann and Lees. In their newly created roles, Fugmann and Lees will integrate North Shore Partners strategy and business into Duet, to boost the firm’s commodities and emerging market franchise.
Prior to joining Duet Group, Lees was the chief executive officer of North Shore Partners. Before this he held the role of managing director at Goldman Sachs where he worked for nine years, founding and heading the European Events Trading group (GSET), which invests in natural resources companies and special situations strategies across capital structures. He has also worked at Morgan Stanley in investment banking and private equity.
Lees says: “This is a good point in the cycle to be launching our equities natural resources product. Recent price action and volatility has left the space under-penetrated by sector hedge funds and specialist managers. Our focus on risk management and absolute returns offers an alternative to the long-only vehicles that still dominate the space.”
Fugmann, previously the chief investment officer of North Shore Partners, also spent 10 years at Goldman Sachs. He held several positions there, including trading natural resources, macro and special situations in Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies and working in the GSET group.
Duet Group manages over $5.5 billion (€4.8 billion) of equities across hedge/long-only funds, private equity and real estate, as at March 31, 2015.
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