By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Hedge fund firm Gottex Fund Management has shut down its two-year old mutual fund that offered retail investors a taste of endowment strategies which use hedge funds, private equity and real estate, according to a regulatory filing.
Trustees for the Gottex Endowment Strategy Fund said they would liquidate the fund, according to a filing made in early February with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
"The Board's decision was made after careful consideration of the Fund's asset size, current expenses and prospects for future growth, among other factors," the filing said.
The fund was launched in late 2013 with $100 million in seed capital from the Swiss firm Gottex Fund Management. When it was launched in late 2013, the fund joined a growing number of so-called liquid alternatives funds that aimed to tap into growing demand for hedge-fund like strategies for lower fees and investment minimums.
Performance at the Gottex fund however was challenged and the fund's 2-year annualized return to the end of February was a negative 6.2 percent, according to Morningstar data.
Assets too never grew strongly, peaking at $58 million in November 2014 and ending 2015 at $34 million. At the end of February, they had dwindled to $13.3 million, data from Morningstar show.
When it was launched, an executive told Reuters that the fund expected to mimic endowments where the average annual return at the time was 12.9 percent over the last 20 years compared with an 8 percent return of a stocks-and-bond portfolio.
In late February, the Collins Alternative Solutions Fund, another mutual fund that offered hedge fund strategies, was shut down after suffering double digit losses in 2015.