The nine-man Northbridge team, led by David Curtis, the former head of FX in Asia Pacific for Credit Suisse, will trade G10 and liquid Asian currencies through the Northbridge Park Macro FX Fund, which aims for 12-15% returns with volatility of 7-10%. Curtis, who started formulating his team about three years ago after leaving Credit Suisse, started trading the same strategy on the Deutsche Bank DBKGn.DE platform with seed capital from the German lender since June 2011. The strategy has delivered 5.4% year-to-date through end-June. In 2011, it clocked a 6.5% return, and in the six months it was operating during 2010, it was up 8.7%.
Besides Curtis, the other members of the investment management team are head portfolio manager Chris de la Hoyde and head of research and quantitative strategies David Bavin.
De la Hoyde is the former head of FX for Asia Pacific at RBS and before that headed FX for north east Asia at Standard Chartered Bank, after playing the same role for Japan and Hong Kong at HSBC.
Bavin is formerly the head of FX and equity derivatives trading at Macquarie Bank, where he had more than 28 years’ experience on FX spot and options trading. His senior management roles in the bank span across a number of businesses in Australia, South Africa and Korea.
Group COO Anthony Kalaf worked as an FX trader and broker with firms such as Tullett & Tokyo, Mitsubishi Trust and Security Pacific Australia, before moving to fund management. Prior to Northbridge, Kalaf was COO and compliance officer for 101 Capital, an investment management firm in Australia.
Kalaf says what sets the team apart from most new start-ups is it is made up of traders and managers who have more than 20 years of experience in FX. “These are exceptional market veterans that have done well in their careers over the years and who have known each other for quite some time.”
The group says it does not want to immediately attract a substantial amount of capital but is looking to launch at around $50 to $100 million and to gradually grow to $750 million.