Gottex Fund Management has announced its trading statement for the quarter ended 30 September 2010.

Highlights:

• Market neutral strategies posted positive performance year to date, continuing to outperform many fund of hedge funds indices.

• Total fee earning assets for the group increased by 6.9% to $7.8 billion compared to $7.3 billion at 30 June 2010 as a result of substantial subscriptions at Gottex Fund Management (GFM) and Gottex Solutions Services (GSS).

• GSS more than doubled its assets from $450 million at June 2010 to $1.01 billion by September 2010.
  

Commenting, Joachim Gottschalk, Chairman and CEO, stated: “The global financial rally towards the end of the third quarter enhanced hedge fund returns for the year. This is an important factor as investors consider repositioning their portfolios looking for interesting investment opportunities for 2011 and beyond, whilst asset flows in the hedge fund industry at present are focused on customized solutions.

“As we get closer to generating incentive fees for our flagship market neutral products, we have started to implement our deferred incentive scheme, which takes into consideration performance over a longer time frame. We will defer part of our incentive fees over two years thereby further aligning ourselves with the interest of our investors. We believe that this innovative change to the incentive fee structure of these products may be unique among commingled funds of hedge funds.

“GSS has made excellent progress in Q3 and I am also pleased with the progress made by our UCITS III fund of hedge funds, which has generated positive performance since its launch in July and now has been passported to Germany, the UK, Italy and Austria.

“Given the global uncertainty about economic and market developments, investors remain hesitant to make asset allocation decisions. However, we are seeing a pick-up in activity in certain areas such as customised solutions and managed accounts as witnessed by GSS doubling its asset base. We expect industry growth to accelerate as investors start looking for higher risk adjusted returns over the relative safe havens of cash and bonds.”