Exclusive: Ex-Lansdowne partner Kirk to join forces with $4 billion Pelham Capital

[April 21, 2015]  By Nishant Kumar

LONDON (Reuters) - Stephen Kirk, who left hedge fund manager Lansdowne Partners last year, has dropped a plan to launch his own independent company and will instead join forces with a $4 billion firm run by a former colleague, a letter to investors showed.

Kirk, 45, a former partner at Lansdowne, was in the process of setting up Campden Square Capital in London, aiming to start business with more than $200 million in one of the region's larger 2015 launches, sources told Reuters in March.

In a recent letter to potential investors in Campden, however, Kirk said that he would now launch his new fund as part of Pelham Capital, a hedge fund firm founded in 2007 by Ross Turner, a former colleague of Kirk's at Lansdowne.

Turner would make a "substantial" investment in the fund, Kirk told investors, without disclosing the amount. It was not clear whether Campden Square Capital would still exist or if the new fund would operate solely under the banner of Pelham.
 

"After careful consideration and detailed discussions with Ross Turner I am pleased to say that Campden Square will be integrating with Pelham Capital," Kirk said in the letter.

"Further to this, we expect to launch the fund in Q4 2015 -- as a continuation of the same strategy, team and with myself as sole portfolio manager," he added.

Kirk and Pelham did not respond to emails from Reuters seeking comment.

Kirk said in the letter that the move would allow his fund to benefit from Pelham's investment infrastructure and client support. It comes as fund managers in Europe face higher start-up costs as a result of regulations introduced since the financial crisis.

Kirk's team, which would bet on financial services stocks in both emerging and developed markets, would move to Pelham's St James's offices in July.

"This is an exciting prospect for our investors as the fund product has limited overlap with Pelham's existing funds, which do not invest in financial services," Kirk said in the letter.

Kirk worked for a decade at Lansdowne, one of Europe's biggest hedge fund firms managing about $18 billion in assets.

He was part of a team that managed the Lansdowne Global Financials Fund, which has produced an annualized return of 10.4 percent since launch in 2004, according to data seen by Reuters.

(Editing by Simon Jessop and Keith Weir)

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