by Ishika Mookerjee of City Wire Asia / January 09, 2018
Pascal Meilland, the former Asia head of discretionary portfolio management at Indosuez Wealth Management, has joined a quantitative research start-up as head of business development, Citywire Asia has learnt.
Called Alphien, the firm will provide quant strategies developed by PhD students and math labs on its web-based platform to financial services companies.
Still in its first round of financing from investors in Singapore and Europe, Alphien was launched by Singapore-headquartered hedge fund, Four Elements Capital.
‘It’s for companies that want to start a quantitative business and don’t want to hire people or lack the infrastructure,’ Meilland said.
The Singapore-based executive wants to partner private banks, external asset managers, mutual funds, family offices and pension funds to sell the strategies, which are based on liquid futures, under a revenue-sharing arrangement following a licensing deal.
‘I’m a strong believer that alpha is the new black and if you look at the recent evolution of assets under management into quant strategies, it’s massive.
‘Most banks are reluctant to go back into hedge funds because it’s very expensive and the performance has been very disappointing in the last few years, mainly because of fees,’ he added.
The firm launched its first contest, which was for a long-short precious metals strategy, in October, and currently has 50 students from National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University working on the project for prize money of SGD 10,000.
‘Instead of hiring a very expensive trader who will take maybe six months to deliver a strategy, and who has to be paid for six months, for SGD 10,000, you have 50 PhD students working on the strategy,’ he explained.
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