With this in mind, the firm has named investment specialist Gaurav Pant as investment adviser to the new proposition that will be a sub-fund of the Melchior Selected Trust, a Luxembourg Sicav.
The fund aims to generate consistent, high levels of positive absolute returns from a portfolio of both long and short Indian equities, while delivering an annual return of between 12% and 18%. The range of net exposure will be between -10% and +25%, with an average gross exposure range of between 80% and 120%.
Inherent with the fund’s absolute return mandate, it will also target lower-than-normal volatility within Indian equities.
To maximise its chance of doing so, Pant will invest predominantly across 25 themes, choosing highly liquid listed securities. He will follow a bottom-up stock selection process within a top-down macro overlay.
Pant was hired from Goldman Sachs where he was an executive director with Goldman Sachs Principal Strategies in London. He will join Dalton Strategic Partnership’s existing Indian equity investment team based in Mumbai.
