West Side Advisors, LLC is a boutique investment manager specializing in relative value strategies within U.S. structured products, including Agency MBS, CMBS and student loans. The firm was founded in 1997 by Gary Lieberman who has over 38 years of experience trading mortgages and fixed income related instruments, and managing portfolios through various economic cycles and trading environments. The investment team seeks to uncover market inefficiencies and identify opportunities in structured products and commercial real estate whole loans to deliver investors outsized and non-correlated returns. West Side Advisors, LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor.
Waterfall Asset Management
Waterfall Asset Management, LLC is an SEC-registered institutional asset manager focused on structured credit (asset-backed securities and loans) and private equity investments. Waterfall was founded in 2005 by Tom Capasse and Jack Ross, two individuals who were early leaders of the ABS industry, and who together have over 60 years of proven ABS/Loan credit analysis, trading, banking and servicing experience. Capasse and Ross started the ABS Group at Merrill Lynch in the 1980s and conducted the first ABS issuances for many of the more than 40 ABS sectors in which Waterfall invests. Waterfall has approximately $7.6 billion* in assets under management (*estimated as of 12/1/18).
Waterfall utilizes a relative value approach to investing in structured credit and loan products. Leveraging the extensive experience of its founding partners and talented portfolio managers, the firm sources, analyzes, and purchases ABS and loan investments across multiple sectors globally in an effort to seek an attractive risk/return profile. This multi-sector specialization in both ABS and loans enables Waterfall to seek to provide its clients with attractive, competitive returns that are generally uncorrelated to most traditional investment sectors.
Waterfall Asset Management’s headquarter offices are located in New York City.
Sagard Holdings
Sagard Holdings is a multi-strategy alternative asset manager with professionals located in Montreal, Toronto, New York, Paris and Singapore. Sagard looks to generate attractive returns by matching investment opportunities with flexible capital solutions and pairing entrepreneurs with teams that have deep industry knowledge. We develop long term partnerships and empower the growth of our investments through a unique global network of portfolio companies, limited partners, advisors and other valued relationships.
Today, Sagard invests across 4 asset classes; equity, private credit (Sagard Credit Partners), royalties (Sagard Healthcare Royalty Partners), and venture capital (Portag3 Ventures and Diagram Ventures).
Sagard Holdings is a wholly owned subsidiary of Power Corporation of Canada (“PCC”) and was founded in 2005 as a complement to its global investment holdings.
Parallax Volatility Advisers
Established in 1996, Parallax Volatility Advisers specializes in trading volatility as an asset class and developing strategies with low correlations to other asset classes. Parallax has approximately 60 employees and currently offers two funds: Parallax Master Fund and Cygnus Alpha. Parallax Master Fund is a global relative value volatility trading strategy that was launched in 1996 and has approximately $2.7 billion in AUM. Cygnus Alpha is a systematic hedging strategy that capitalizes on relative value opportunities in skew and term structure within index options markets. Cygnus was launched in April 2018 and has roughly $300 million in AUM. Parallax Volatility Advisers is managed and owned by William Bartlett, Dan Hutchison and Jill Armstrong.
Options Information Technology, LLC
Options is a global leader in financial technology managed services, IT infrastructure and cybersecurity. We enable our clients to deliver a dual mandate: operating world-class financial technology infrastructure today, while supporting business scalability and new technology for tomorrow.
Options has a global team and global infrastructure, allowing customers with global operations to work with one single vendor. The feature-rich global platform, built to exacting investment bank standards, is further bolstered by industry-leading transparency around pricing, a 24x7, high-touch support model and unrivalled SOC-accredited information security.
Over 200 firms globally currently leverage the Options platform, including the leading global investment banks, hedge funds, funds of funds, proprietary trading firms, private equity houses and exchanges. These clients span over 20 countries worldwide with seven regional Options offices supporting these firms.
Options clients leverage four main solutions:
Managed Platform - A fully managed technology and cybersecurity platform that provides customers with a single outsourced technology service encompassing all aspects of financial sector technology including cloud, desktop and mobile technology.
Managed Colocation - A managed colocation and proximity services platform providing customer access to all key liquidity centers globally, and across all asset classes (equities, derivatives, fixed income and FX).
Managed Applications - An enterprise strength, application management solution for hosting dozens of customer proprietary applications, with a standardized, full-service model for the delivery of the leading front, middle and back- office systems.
Options Advisory - A hedge fund and financial technology consultancy service.
NES Financial
NES Financial provides technology-enabled services for the efficient middle- and back-office administration of highly specialized financial transactions. Their technology-enabled solutions include EB-5 and Opportunity Zone Fund administration, 1031 exchanges, and private equity fund administration services. Many of the world’s largest financial institutions and corporations rely on their proprietary technology, unparalleled expertise, and outstanding services to ensure the secure, transparent, and compliant management of funds while also lowering operational costs, reducing risk, and improving ROI. For more information, please visit www.nesfinancial.com.
Monsoon Blockchain Storage
Monsoon is a blockchain-based decentralized protocol that aims to construct a worldwide storage and cloud optimization network of users and providers based on the Monsoon Distributed Storage and Cloud Optimization Technology.
Medalist Partners
Medalist Partners is an alternative investment manager with approximately $1 billion in AUM across strategies in structured credit and asset finance. The platform includes liquid alternatives, hedge funds and private debt vehicles. Based in New York, the 17 person team is led by partners Greg Richter, Brian Herr and Michael Ardisson. Medalist’s clients include pensions, endowments, foundations, banks, fund of funds, family offices and HNW individuals. The business and track record were started within Credit Suisse and Candlewood Investment Group prior to being spun-out as an independent, partner-owned firm in 2018. The Medalist team has extensive experience in specialty finance, structured products, investment banking, securitization, and credit underwriting. For more information, visit www.medalistpartners.com.
Hildene Capital Management
Hildene Capital Management (“Hildene”) is an SEC-registered, employee-owned and multiple award-winning asset management firm. The firm is based in Stamford, CT and manages approximately $9.3 billion in niche structured finance investments. Brett Jefferson, President and CIO, founded Hildene in 2008 to capitalize on opportunities in structured credit following a number of successful years at Marathon and has been involved in structured credit since the mid-1990s.
Hildene’s investment process is founded on a disciplined, systematic approach to structured credit investments. Hildene’s focus is on identifying inefficiencies within the underlying assets or the structure itself, evaluating the embedded option values of structured securities, and capitalizing on its findings. Hildene seeks to “buy inefficiency” in making calculated investments where returns will be realized from acquiring deep fundamental value in inefficient markets.
Hildene’s senior investment team has a long and established track record of investing across a number of credit and distressed cycles, leveraging their experience and expertise in managing complex assets. Our investment philosophy is underpinned by 3 guiding principles: (i) focus on niche parts of the structured finance market which exhibit inefficiencies, (ii) appropriately manage the scale of opportunities, and (iii) align its interests with investors through its fees: we are not only sizeable investors in our funds, but we further defer a substantial portion of our incentive fee until redemption.
Grayscale
Digital currencies are poised to radically transform our financial system, but it won’t happen overnight. At Grayscale Investments, we believe investors deserve an established, trusted, and accountable partner that can help them navigate the gray areas of digital currency investing. That’s why we are building transparent, familiar investment products that facilitate access to this emerging asset class, and provide the springboard to invest in the new digital currency-powered “internet of money.”
GoldenTree
GoldenTree is an employee owned asset management firm that specializes in opportunities across the credit universe in sectors such as high yield bonds, leveraged loans, distressed debt, structured products, credit-themed equities and emerging markets. GoldenTree is one of the largest independent asset managers focused on credit with approximately $28 billion in assets under management. The firm has been managing assets on behalf of our investors for over 18 years and has managed an asset base of more than $5 billion since 2003. GoldenTree was founded by Steven Tananbaum in March 2000.
GoldenTree’s investments are designed with the intent to preserve and grow our investors’ capital utilizing a fundamental value-based approach. This approach is executed by one of the more experienced teams of investment professionals in the market place. The firm’s partnership structure is designed to ensure that we are disciplined in managing our capital base and focused on delivering differentiated top tier performance relative to our peer group. The firm has over 240 employees, 27 of whom are partners, with offices in New York, London, Singapore and Sydney.
Fidelity Digital Assets
Fidelity Digital Assets, a Fidelity Investments Company, offers a full-service enterprise-grade platform for securing, trading and supporting digital assets, such as bitcoin and ether. Fidelity Digital Assets combines the operational and technical expertise of the broader Fidelity organization with the unique capabilities of dedicated Blockchain expertise to deliver a completely new offering for institutional investors. Fidelity Investments is one of the world’s largest and most diversified financial services providers with more than $7.1 trillion in client assets under administration. Learn more at http://fidelitydigitalassets.com.
ETF Managers Group
ETFMG (ETF Managers Group) was founded by Sam Masucci in 2014 with a vision of developing innovative thematic Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that provide investors unique exposure to new markets. Today, ETFMG has over $3.8 billion assets under management and 12 funds in market that provide access to a diverse collection of global themes. To date, 75% of our ETFs are first to market products that include unique exposure to industries such as cannabis, cybersecurity and mobile payments. We turn portfolio management strategies into successful ETFs by partnering with market segment experts bringing long-term growth opportunities to investors. ETFMG is impacting the ETF Industry with products that innovate: www.etfmg.com
EJF Capital
EJF Capital LLC (“EJF”) is an SEC-registered¹, employee-owned alternative asset management firm headquartered outside of Washington, DC. EJF manages approximately $7.7 billion² of hedge, separately managed accounts, and private equity assets, as well as $2.7 billion of CDO assets through its affiliates. EJF was founded in 2005 by Manny Friedman and Neal Wilson along with a small team of professionals from Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Group, Inc. (“FBR”). EJF currently employs approximately 85 professionals across three offices globally (Arlington, VA, London, England and Shanghai, China).
Prior to launching EJF, Mr. Friedman was the co-founder and Co-CEO of FBR for more than fifteen years. Mr. Friedman possesses more than 40 years of experience in the U.S. securities industry with a particular expertise in banks and financials. Mr. Wilson previously managed both the Alternative Asset Investments and the Private Wealth Management groups at FBR, and served as a Branch Chief with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC.
¹Registering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not imply any level of skill or training.
²Firm AUM includes $291.4 million of uncalled capital
Context Capital Management
Context Capital Management is focused on finding opportunities where equity and credit markets have divergent views of a single company. We strive to exploit these inefficiencies through hedged positions in the capital structure. A typical position consists of a long position in a company’s convertible or high yield bonds and a short position in the common stock. Context focuses on generating uncorrelated absolute returns with an emphasis on capital preservation. Context manages money for U.S. onshore and offshore investors through the Context Partners Master Fund, LP and a number of separate accounts. Context was founded in 2001 and the investment team has an average of more than 25 years investing in convertible and corporate bonds. Firm assets are currently more than $200 million, and include family offices, qualified high net worth investors, corporate pensions, and institutional clients. Context is registered with the U.S. Securities Exchange commission as an investment advisor.
CIBC
CIBC (CM: NYSE, TSX) is a leading Canadian-based global financial institution with a market capitalization of 50 billion, a Basel III Common Equity Tier 1 capital ratio of 11.4%, and is rated A+ by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, Aa2 by Moody’s Investor Service and AA- by Fitch Ratings. Through our major business units – Canadian Personal & Small Business Banking, Canadian Commercial Banking & Wealth Management, U.S. Commercial Banking & Wealth Management and Capital Markets – our more than 45,000 employees provide a full range of financial products and services to 11 million individual, small business, commercial, corporate and institutional clients in Canada, the U.S. and around the world.
CIBC Capital Markets has been recognized as the Top Prime Broker in Canada by Alternative IQ for three consecutive years, and our newly-established multi-asset class prime brokerage platform in the U.S. delivers customized solutions across execution, financing, clearing and custody products in order to meet the growing needs of clients in the alternatives market globally.
BTIG
BTIG is a global financial services firm with 600 employees located in 18 cities throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. In addition to prime brokerage, outsource trading and capital introduction, the firm’s capabilities include global execution, portfolio trading, electronic trading, transition management, investment banking, corporate access, research and strategy, commission management and more. BTIG also offers execution, expertise and insights for equities, equity derivatives, ETFs and fixed income, currency and commodities (futures, commodities, foreign exchange, interest rates, credit, and convertible and preferred securities). To learn more about BTIG, visit www.btig.com.
Brevet
Headquartered in New York, Brevet is a registered investment advisor employing a specialty finance strategy that emphasizes downside protection. Focusing on opportunities related to the government sector, Brevet originates and structures customized financing solutions that facilitate borrower growth initiatives. With its first affiliate established in 1998, Brevet has developed extensive relationships with U.S. state, federal, and international government agencies over the past 20 years.
Bayview Asset Management
Bayview Asset Management, LLC ("Bayview"), initially founded in 1993, is a mortgage investment firm focused on investments in mortgage credit, including residential and commercial whole loans, mortgage-backed securities, mortgage servicing rights, and other mortgage-related assets. Bayview is headquartered in Coral Gables, FL with approximately 1,800 employees across asset management, loan servicing, and originations. As of January 31, 2019, Bayview manages approximately $14.2 billion in AUM. Bayview believes its ability to integrate knowledge across the firm’s operating businesses provides a significant edge.
Axonic Capital
Axonic Capital LLC is a New York based trading and investment firm founded by Clayton DeGiacinto in 2010. The firm's primary business is to manage client capital through structured credit, systematic fixed income, and commercial real estate lending strategies. Axonic and its affiliates manage over $2.6 billion in assets and employ a staff of over 40 professionals including traders, analysts and administrative personnel.
The fund is a Registered Investment Advisor.