Max Schmid, a 30-year veteran of international capital markets, has joined fund of hedge funds manager Fortune Group in London from City Capital Corporation as a managing director for inve
Max Schmid, a 30-year veteran of international capital markets, has joined fund of hedge funds manager Fortune Group in London from City Capital Corporation as a managing director for investment advisory.
‘I am delighted to have been able to persuade someone of Max’s calibre to join the firm at this exciting time for Fortune and the hedge fund industry in general,’ says Fortune founder and chief executive Simon Hopkins.
‘This hire adds another senior level appointment to a team of industry veterans that includes Jack Schwager, Nancy Curtin, Rick Tarvin and Frank Casey, all of whom have traded markets and have hands-on experience.’
Says Schmid: ‘Fortune boasts an unparalleled team of investment professionals and a wide array of innovative investment solutions. I look forward to building out the firm’s profile as one of the industry’s leading hedge fund advisors over the coming years.’
Schmid, who has dual Swiss and Italian citizenship, began his investment banking career with UBS in 1978 on the floor of the Swiss Exchange. From 1982 he spent more than six years in London as a new issue trader, market maker and syndicate manager for UBS Securities, Bank of America and Credit Suisse First Boston, where he was in charge of new issue trading across all asset classes and currencies. Between 1988 and 2002, he held various senior trading positions with banks in Zurich, London and New York including Bank Leu and ABN Amro.
In 2003 he joined City Capital, a London boutique investment bank, as a managing director of its Bermuda-based alternative assets subsidiary, responsible for the distribution of alternative assets including single-manager hedge funds, funds of hedge funds and structured, private equity-style products to institutional clients.
Fortune Group is the trading name of Fortune Asset Management, a London-based alternative asset management firm managing a range of funds of funds including the Market Wizards Fund (all managed accounts programme), Fortune Horizon (multistrategy), Fortune Compass (equity strategies) and Fortune Explorer (emerging markets). The firm also manages customised portfolios for private wealth management groups, family offices, insurance companies, banks and public and private pension funds.
The firm has provided seed capital to many nascent hedge funds in Europe, raising more than USD4bn in early-stage funding. Fortune is a subsidiary of Close Brothers Group, an independent UK merchant banking group founded in the City of London more than 125 years ago and whose asset management division managed GBP8.9bn of assets at the end of January.
