Sanjiv Bhatia gets seeded for event-driven hedge fund

Sanjiv Bhatia, a former portfolio manager at Deephaven Capital Management, which was wound up in mid-2008, has reappeared with a new Hong Kong-based alternative investment firm called Isometric Capital Management.

The target is to launch an event-driven strategy later this year that will focus on equity markets, but also express views across other parts of the capital structure.

The fund will launch with $50-75 million, with a capacity of $1 billion-plus. Around $40 million of the initial funds will come from seeding company FRM Capital Advisors, a division of fund of hedge fund specialist Financial Risk Management.

A second Asian seeding deal may be on the cards for 2010, says FRM Capital Advisors. "Time is running out for this year, but we hope to do more in Asia next year," says chief operating officer Patric de Gentile-Williams. "We're not looking to tick boxes in composing a diverse range of strategies, we just want to seed the best managers rather than the second tier."

FRM's approach is to work out a revenue-sharing deal -- whereby the hedge fund manager is seeded -- that eventually expires. It does not take a share in the asset management company nor a seat on the board.