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Altvest Expands Hedge Fund Offerings to High-Net-Worth Clients
Altvest.com, a Web site offering information on hedge funds, is expanding its market reach to include high- net-worth individuals. Altvest Connect, which will be launched this week, will allow accredited investors with at least a $1 million net worth to access information on more than 1,600 funds via the secure Web site. Altvest, which targets institutional size investors, already offers Altvest Edge for qualified purchasers with at least $5 million in investable assets and $25 million for institutions. The site also brings together fund managers to post risk and performance information on their funds for interested investors.
Altvest is a communication platform to allow hedge fund managers to communicate with their existing investor base and with prospective investors, says Howard Mason, CEO of Altvest. The site features a listing of fund managers who post information on their funds and rankings according to areas such as strategy sectors. Contact, regulatory and personal information as well as assets and funds managed are also included in the managers listing.
There are two sets of people who access the site, says Mason. Hedge fund managers who input their information and can view relative rankings and investors who access the site in order to identify hedge funds that meet their investment criteria. The tools that we provide allow investors to search different managers and different funds for particular performance or risk criteria that theyre interested in meeting. He adds that there is also a proprietary page on the site, which allows managers to post relevant information such as presentations describing the latest strategy developments.
Although Altvest doesnt have any immediate plans to offer transaction capabilities, it has partnered with Hedgebay.com and offers a link to the site for transacting off shore funds. We felt that the main priority in the industry right now is to improve the level of disclosure in a controlled fashion, says Mason. In particular, disclosure regarding performance and making sure the numbers are properly verified. We feel that needs to be done without confusing position information or in any way compromising the confidentiality of the manager's strategy.
Mason says the Altvest site has recorded a noticeable increase in traffic over the past few months, with about 3,500 page views per day at the end of 1999 and current page views running about 5,000 per day. The addition of accredited investors will represent considerable broadening of the Altvest community to include offerings that are tailored toward high-net-worth individuals as well as institutional types of investors, continues Mason. The Altvest site also offers free services, including a hedge fund news service, conference service, request for managers proposals site and a recruitment site.