22 October 2019
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A team of five Italian fund managers has left Kairos, the Italian subsidiary of Julius Baer, to set up a new equity hedge fund.
According to Bloomberg, Federico Riggio, Michele Fiumara, David Grazzini, Vittorio Villa, and Flavio Russo, who were overseeing the Kairos Pegasus Fund, departed the firm at the end of September and could be launching the new firm in the spring of 2020.
The new investment house, Helikon Investments, will have offices in London and Milan. The team of fund managers hopes to launch the fund in April with at least €500m and plans to raise as much as €1bn, sources close to the matter had told Bloomberg.
Their departure from Kairos comes just a few months after Julius Baer announced in August it would finally retain ownership of Kairos. The Swiss private bank had been exploring for months to sell the Italian wealth manager of €9.4bn in AUM.
Julius Baer also said that it aims to develop a strategy for a closer alliance between the two firms' wealth management businesses for clients in Italy.
