Ex-Martin Currie fund manager Woehrling unveils equity boutique

Former Martin Currie European manager Eric Woehrling is preparing to set up an Edinburgh-based equity boutique, with a European long/short fund as its first offering.

His new firm, Pantarèi Capital Partners, intends to launch the Pantarèi Opportunities fund, an absolute return fund structured as a UCITS III Sicav, denominated in euros, subject to regulatory approval.

The fund will focus on European equities, with an unconstrained mandate which will allow the manager to take aggressive short positions in tough market conditions.

Woehrling, who left Martin Currie last week, ran the group’s £17m European fund.
Having joined Martin Currie in 2000, Woehrling designed the group’s European mid-cap products, including the Pan-European Opportunities fund.

He also co-managed the Martin Currie European and GF Pan European Alpha funds, as well as several European segregated mandates, with assets peaking over €950m.

He said his new company – named after a saying by an ancient Greek philosopher which means ‘everything flows’ – will use an investment process designed to identify stocks where the market has overlooked the impact of changes on companies’ outlooks.

Within the Opportunities fund he will look to short aggressively as markets fall, as well as taking longer positions in oversold stocks.

“Our aim is to outperform our benchmark, the MSCI Europe, by 5% each year, with no more than 80% downside participation,” the manager said. 

“If we launched tomorrow, our approach would be to short the victims of the European debt crisis and go long companies that own real assets, such as Swedish storage firm Vopak.”

Woehrling said the perils of the current market turmoil are still underestimated, and conventional fund management approaches are likely to struggle.