Incubator MMC seeds first start-up, loses director

Boutique incubator MMC Contrarian has seeded its first fund, the Contrarian Global Value fund (CGV), in a joint-venture with Contrarian Global Asset Management (Contrarian GAM), investing $20 million on day one.

Meanwhile, MMC Contrarian director Erik Metanowski brought forward his resignation from the incubator and has been replaced by alternate director, Peter Constable. “It’s disappointing when you lose a stock-picker like Erik,” Andrew Fairweather, MMC Contrarian chief executive officer, said. Fairweather said Metanowski had not left MMC to take an immediate position at another company. The CGV fund, which is primarily run by Edinburgh-based portfolio managers Charles Heenan and Geoff Legg, has so far invested $20 million from an available $160 million in the American, British, Hong Kong and Singaporean markets. MMC owns 51 per cent of the fund, with Contrarian GAM taking the remainder. Fairweather said the CGV was operated as an absolute return fund, investing in a concentrated portfolio of global equities. Its clients are predominantly high-net worth investors. “It’s an opportunistic, boutique fund with a concentrated portfolio…Our primary strategy is to develop start-up funds managers where we don’t have a presence and where we believe the market is strong. We own the manager and we seed it… We seed them with a decent amount of capital on day one. “We’ve made six investments – 27 per cent of seed money – on day one.” Earlier this year, MMC Contrarian acquired boutique manager MMC Asset Management (MMC AM), which was founded by Metanowski in 1993 and manages in excess of $240 million. Constable, the newly-appointed director of MMC, owned AM Constable, which merged with MMC AM in 2003. Recent MMC Contrarian hires include Stephen Atkinson, formerly the co-head of Credit Suisse’s small caps team, and Brendan Burgess, who worked with South African value manager Abvest, as portfolio managers in June and April respectively.