GLG to soft-close Lagrange's European long/short fund

GLG is to soft-close its Dublin-domiciled European Equity Alternative fund, run by the group's co-founder Pierre Lagrange, less than a year after it launched.

The group said the UCITS fund, a mirror of Lagrange’s GLG European Long-Short hedge fund listed in the Cayman Islands, will be soft-closed at $1bn (£643m), before being hard-closed at $1.25bn. The fund has proved immensely popular since launching less than a year ago, taking in $760m so far as investors look for portfolios to protect them from the sell-off in European equity markets. It mimics the strategy used by the Caymans hedge fund which launched in 2000. While wider European indices have plunged amid the worsening eurozone crisis, the European Equity Alternative fund has delive...