Minority Manager Readies Options Strategy Fund
Atlanta, GA Nov, 17, 2009 Scirage Capital Partners is preparing to launch its flagship options strategy fund. The new fund, which is still unnamed, will have a minimum investment of $250,000 and no lockup period, “because of the pioneering of sorts as a minority hedge fund,” says Michael Bach, the fund manager and founder.
Michael Bach Atlanta, who began his finance career nearly sixteen years ago as the CEO of a
small-cap private equity firm, founded Scirage just ahead of the nations financial crisis, noticing that there were virtually no African American asset managers at all. “I’ve always know that there were limited numbers of African American’s in the finance industry,” says Bach.
The Fund’s investment focus will be on short term investment contracts, investing in mostly in put and call options, which Bach describes as “an any-market strategy.” The firm expects to begin accepting outside capital at the beginning of December, and thus far has capital commitments for $15 million, mostly from a single investor. Scirage currently employs 9 people, most of which have finance industry backgrounds. Bach says Scirage will in the future target high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors as clients, but for now will concentrate on further developing its investment strategy.
The biggest hurtle Michael Bach Atlanta believes his firm will have to overcome is making investors feel comfortable with the idea of investing large sums of capital in alternatives and in minority firms. “One thing that causes investors to hesitate is when they hear the words ‘alternative investment’ they think ‘risk,'” he says. “Our goal is to expand our capital base to our current capacity of $100 million by the first quarter of 2011, but in order to do that, we will have to lessen risk and help investors overcome their fears, and we do that with a successful track record.”
