Natixis Investment Managers affiliate, Ossiam, has launched its first long-short equity fund, domiciled in Ireland and shortly to be registered for sale in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland.
The Ossiam ESG Opportunity fund will build an actively-selected long position across global equities whilst also shorting areas of the universe.
The firm said it would aim to deliver “absolute return over the medium term with limited exposure to equity markets” and aim to achieve an improved ESG and carbon footprint position compared to the global equities universe.
Its long exposure will select stocks using a machine learning process based on ESG metrics with material impact on financial performance and a “multi-factor process” which aims to select stocks with positive exposure to traditional financial factors.
The expected move in any stock in the long portfolio, relative to movements in the overall market (beta), will be “hedged by the short position”, according to the firm.
It will rebalance quarterly.
Luc Dumontier, head of investments and operations at Ossiam, said the fund “offers a way to balance absolute return objectives with an improved ESG profile”.
The fund is classified as Article 8 under SFDR.
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