Altana Wealth Targets China’s Real Estate

Altana Wealth, a specialist fund manager focused on delivering alpha from niche strategies uncorrelated to other asset classes, has launched a new fund.

Altana Wealth,
a specialist asset manager, has launched the Altana China
Recovery Opportunity (ACR) fund to deliver asymmetric payoffs
from investments in Chinese real estate bonds, despite the
challenges faced by China”s real estate.

Altana Wealth focuses on distressed and event-driven credit
through strategies such as Altana Distressed Opportunities,
Altana Credit Opportunities, Altana Asymmetric Opportunities and
the Altana Event-Driven Credit Fund.

Targeting returns of 2 to 4x over 18 to 36 months, the fund aims
to participate in the restructurings of distressed offshore
Chinese real estate developers whose bonds are governed by New
York law and who are entering consensual restructurings with
creditors, the firm said in a statement. With more than 40
private developers in China now facing complex, multi-year
restructurings with their offshore bonds, Altana believes that
the combination of bottoming prices and a policy backdrop
favouring asset recovery presents an overlooked opportunity in
which a significant asymmetric payoff is achievable.

“This is an archetypal Altana investment opportunity: specialist,
overlooked, and asymmetric. In a world of increased interest
rates, inflationary pressure, and market overcrowding, smart
investors want to allocate some of their portfolio to investments
that can potentially supercharge their returns,” Lee Robinson,
founder and CIO of Altana Wealth, said. “As with many of Altana’s
funds, the ACR can provide investors with a differentiated return
stream, increasing their exposure to specialist and often
disregarded opportunities through a team with deep analytical
capabilities and a strong track record of delivering alpha.”

The strategy is managed by portfolio managers Benedict Keim and
Mathieu Scemama working with CIO Lee Robinson, alongside the
Altana team. Altana Wealth said it will invest its own capital in
the fund to ensure that it is aligned with its co-investors.

This is despite the challenges China’s real estate sector faces,
with house prices falling and a slowdown in investments. However,
a number of wealth managers have come out recently in favour of
emerging markets and Asia this year, for instance UK-based
Aberdeen Investments, Paris-based Amundi, Carmignac and Indosuez,
as well as GIB Asset Management and Franklin Templeton. While
China faces many structural challenges over the next five years,
Aberdeen takes comfort from China’s new five-year plan to
accelerate the green transition, after it wrapped up its fourth
plenum meeting of the Communist Party of China. See more
here and
here.