HDF Finance

Best Institutional Fund of Hedge Funds Provider: Winner

Best Overall Group: Highly Commended

HDF Finance was one of the first French independent funds of hedge fund managers. It started life in 1986 and remains 100% owned and operated by the managers themselves.

The group manages a range of alternative, long only and flexible funds of funds, domiciled both in France and internationally. It employs 60 people and operates from five offices around the world. Total assets under management exceed €1.6 billion, split 90% in hedge funds and 10% in long-only.

The client base is primarily French, made up of institutions, corporates and private investors but around 30% of the clientele is international.

The group prides itself on its integrity, lack of conflicts of interest and qualitative analysis that drives 80% of the fund selection process. Top-down macro economic analysis dictates allocations in asset classes, regions, strategy and style.

A research driven process is central to the investment strategy and the group runs as a think tank, working with a group chaired by Christian de Boissieu, an economic adviser to the French Prime Minister. The group contains many leading economic experts from France and abroad and de Boissieu has collaborated with the group since 1990.

Until this summer, HDF was headed up by founder Gilles du Fretay. Before creating HDF, he worked for Citibank and ran portfolios for the London private bank The Continental Trust. Du Fretay was the first manager to introduce traditional and alternative multi-manager portfolios to the French market.

Du Fretay passed away recently after a long illness but the ethos he installed at HDF continues. His wife Christine du Fretay has assumed the CEO role, determined to grow the group and remain true to its principles. Integrity, transparency and above all independence are the key drivers behind the group's past and future success.

A former McKinsey consultant with 24 years' experience in finance, Christine du Fretay also brings her comprehensive marketing skills to the table. In a previous guise, she founded Money Marketing, a specialist agency in asset management promotion.

Giles Guérin also recently joined the firm as deputy CEO, sitting alongside CIO Christophe Chouard and COO Erwan Duquoc.

"I strongly believe our five member executive committee and the entire HDF team has all the talents and experience it needs to continue delivering ‘excellence through research'," says Christine du Fretay, referencing one of the company's core principles.

The HDF Research Center drives the process, whittling down a field of 32,000 funds throughout the world to concentrate on a sample of 1,500. From that, HDF selects approximately 150 funds with superior performance, to give investors access to a wide range of management tools and to a large number of specialised fund managers.

Upward moves in the stock markets have generated positive returns for HDF since the beginning of the year and du Fretay says she is encouraged by the way the fund has weathered the storms of the last year. "Having achieved this performance without strong directional bets gives us some comfort about our ability to generate similar returns in the months ahead, whatever the market environment may be," she says.

HDF says its strategies to the end of the year will be targeted on long/short equities, global macro and long/short fixed income.