Marshall Wace

Marshall Wace LLP is a hedge fund in the City of London that was founded by Paul Marshall and Ian Wace. Marshall is chairman and chief investment officer and Wace is chief executive officer.

The firm operates from fund management offices in London, Greenwich, and Hong Kong, where it also has a joint venture with GaveKal Asia Limited. The head office in London is on the top floor of The Adelphi, close to the Strand.

Marshall Wace manages a number of fundamental long/short equity funds. The investment process for each uses fundamental analysis that seeks to identify companies which are substantially mispriced on an absolute or relative basis. Managers have the ability to shift from value to growth, from small to medium to large capitalization stocks, and switch from a net long position to a net short position. Managers can also use futures and options to hedge.

In addition to its fundamental long/short equity strategies, Marshall Wace runs a proprietary alpha capture system called TOPS (Trade Optimised Portfolio System), which polls the investment ideas of equity sell-side practitioners (generalists, sector specialists, strategists and economists) around the world and uses algorithms to analyse and optimise this information into liquid equity portfolios.

Most of Marshall Wace's investors are major institutions. However, a number of its funds are UCITS-compliant vehicles. In addition to the funds Marshall Wace runs itself, a significant proportion of the money it manages for clients resides in separately managed accounts.

The firm formed its joint venture with Hong Kong-based research and investment management house GaveKal in 2008. MW GaveKal has a number of Asia-focused equity funds both long-only and long-short that are managed within it.

Marshall Wace was a founder member of the Hedge Fund Standards Board (HFSB) and is a member of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA).

Personnel

Before starting the fund, Paul Marshall was Head of European Equities at Mercury Asset Management and Ian Wace was Head of Equities Trading at Deutsche Bank. Marshall is one of the biggest backers of the Liberal Democrats party in the City of London and chairs the CentreForum think tank.

Wace is chairman of the charity Absolute Return for Kids and Marshall is also a supporter. Absolute Return for Kids supports deprived children in Britain, South Africa, and Eastern Europe. Every year the Ark dinner brings A-list celebrity and hedge fund money together. It raised £11m in 2007.

External links

• Marshall Wace
• Profile of Marshall Wace, The Times, October 15, 2005
• AIMA
• GaveKal
• Hedge Fund Standards Board