(Bloomberg) -- Ace Capital Gestao de Recursos Ltda., a hedge fund manager run by former traders at Banco Santander SA’s Brazil unit, is acquiring a quantitative firm in a bid to expand its computer-driven investing.
The Sao Paulo-based asset manager, which oversees about 4.6 billion reais ($818 million), has bought a controlling stake in Saires Capital Gestão de Recursos Ltda, according to Ricardo Denadai, a founding partner and chief executive officer at Ace Capital.
The move aims to bolster Ace’s rules-based strategies as well as its discretionary trading, Denadai said in an interview. Ace is absorbing Saires’s team and will now be home to quantitative funds Dinamico and Multicenarios, which will be managed by a group led by Juliano Faria.
“Local hedge funds still lag global peers when it comes to technology and systematic trading,” Denadai said. “We’re trying to do a catch-up.”
Ace Capital was founded in 2019, part of a batch of new Brazilian hedge funds built by executives who left big banks to open their own shops. About two years ago, Ace merged with equity-focused asset manager Grou Capital.
As part of the Saires transaction, Ace ended up acquiring a minority stake held by local asset-management firm Sparta.
While there’s no official figure showing how prevalent the quant strategies are in Brazil, they account for only a fraction of the industry’s roughly 9 trillion reais in assets. Some of the local firms that embraced quant trading include Giant Steps and Kadima.
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