Type LLP Products Investment products Headquarters London | Industry Financial services Website www.mwam.com Founded 1997 | |
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Key people Paul Marshall and Ian Wace Subsidiaries Marshall Wace Asset Management Limited, Eaglewood Capital Management LLC, 80 Capital LLP | ||
Marshall Wace LLP is a hedge fund in London that was founded by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace in 1997. Marshall is chairman and chief investment officer, and Wace is chief executive officer.
Contents
Overview
The firm manages more than $25bn and operates from fund management offices in London, New York and Hong Kong. The head office in London is on the top floor of The Adelphi, close to the Strand.
Marshall Wace manages a number of fundamental short equity funds. The investment process for each uses fundamental analysis that seeks to identify companies which are substantially mispriced on an absolute or relative basis. Managers have the ability to shift from value to growth, from small to medium to large capitalization stocks, and switch from a net long position to a net short position. Managers can also use futures and options to hedge.
In addition to its fundamental long/short equity strategies, Marshall Wace runs a proprietary alpha capture system called TOPS (Trade Optimised Portfolio System), which polls the investment ideas of equity sell-side practitioners (generalists, sector specialists, strategists, and economists) around the world and uses algorithms to analyse and optimise this information into liquid equity portfolios.
Most of Marshall Wace's investors are major institutions. However, a number of its funds are UCITS-compliant vehicles. In addition to the funds Marshall Wace runs itself, a significant proportion of the money it manages for clients resides in separately managed accounts.
Marshall Wace was a founder member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board (HFSB) and is a member of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA).
In August 2014, Marshall Wace made €27 million from going short on the collapse of the Portuguese bank Banco Espirito Santo.
Personnel
Before starting the fund, Paul Marshall was Head of European Equities at Mercury Asset Management, and Ian Wace was Head of Equities Trading at Deutsche Bank. Marshall is one of the biggest backers of the Liberal Democrats party in the City of London and chairs the CentreForum think tank.
Wace is chairman of the charity Absolute Return for Kids and Marshall is also a supporter. Absolute Return for Kids supports deprived children in Britain, South Africa, and Eastern Europe. Every year the Ark dinner brings A-list celebrity and hedge fund money together. It raised £11m in 2007. David Cook, current Chief Digital Officer at Time Out was formerly Chief Information Officer at Marshall Wace.