Man Group rises on report of fund experiment

The world's largest hedge fund, Man Group, rose strongly on reports it is experimenting with a new way of improving results at its flagship computerised fund.

AHL, which manages assets of $16.3bn, has been hit hard by quantititave easing and chaos in the Eurozone, in turn hitting Man's share price and causing it to tumble out of the FTSE 100.

The Financial Times reported the firm had moved $1.5bn of the fund into a new vehicle dubbed 'Evolution'.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed source who said Evolution had made 18% so far this year, and made 16% last year.

However, Man Group declined to comment on the story.

The source said that Evolution had enjoyed its success by trading on a wider range of areas than AHL, while still using 'quant' technology, whereby complex algorithms determine investments.

Instead of trading in futures contracts like AHL, Evolution invests in areas such as emerging market interest rate derivatives, credit indices and even electricity contracts, the FT said.

The sheer size of the AHL fund, and its importance to Man, meant the hedge fund was one of the strongest risers on the FTSE 350 on Thursday morning.

After an hour of trading shares were up 4.2% to 76.15p.

MM