PMA launches long/short India fund

Hong Kong alternative fund manager PMA Capital Management has launched the PMA India Fund. The fund will have a long/short strategy and seek to capture 80% of overall market capitalisation by covering the top 250 companies in India.

It will be managed by Anoop Villait, who runs PMA's India strategy. He will be based in Hong Kong.  Before joining PMA he was a portfolio manager of the Kuvera fund, an Indian long/short fund that managed $190 million and returned an annualised 24% from 2004 to 2007.

The new fund's fees are 1% for management and 20% for performance. The target size of the fund is $500 million and target annual return 20%.

As well as investing directly in the fund, it is possible to enter via another door, namely the multi-strat PMA Asian Opportunities Fund, which invests in PMA's single-strategy funds.

PMA was founded in 2002 and manages $1.7 billion in assets. It is still run by chief executive Farhat Malik and is one of the largest multi-strategy funds in Asia. Its flagship macro fund is the PMA Harvester Fund, which is roughly flat year-to-date.

PMA was acquired by $8 billion Japanese firm Sparx Asset Management in a $226 million stock-and-cash deal in 2006.