The firm said the launch of the UCITS-compliant BlackRock Strategic Funds’ Global Event Driven Fund is in response to ‘growing investor demand for liquid alternative investments.’
The fund will seek to take advantage of ‘an attractive environment’ for deal-making and other corporate actions. It is the firm’s first UCITS-compliant event-driven fund in Europe.
BlackRock is hoping to tap into what it sees as increased market volatility and challenging returns from traditional equities and bonds, which are encouraging investors to seek alternative, uncorrelated returns.
The fund will target a range of corporate events including announced mergers, spin-offs, restructurings, synergistic acquisitions and shareholder activism situations.
It will predominantly invest in developed market equities as well as opportunistically across the capital structure, taking both long and short positions.
McKenna joined the firm last year from Harvard Management Company where he co-founded the firm’s event-driven strategy. Prior to this he was a portfolio manager for the event-driven strategy at Caxton Associates and earlier worked on corporate transactions at Salomon Smith Barney.
