We got a buyer for the private placement.

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http://www.hedgefundsreview.com/hedge-fu...

Platinum Partners has delivered remarkably consistent returns in a turbulent market cycle by striking a balance between diversification, downside protection, non-correlation and upside optionality.

The Platinum Partners Value Arbitrage Fund (PPVA) has quietly amassed one of the most impressive long-term track records in the hedge fund business.

A multi-strategy fund with exposure to around 10 underlying strategies, PPVA has generated annualised returns of over 20% since inception in 2003 with standard deviation of just 5.34% and no losing years, giving it a Sharpe ratio of 3.07.

Uri Landesman, president of Platinum Partners, the investment adviser to PPVA, highlights the fund’s return relative to volatility as its most important feature.

“For us controlling drawdowns and downside volatility is as important as the overall return. We always look at returns on a risk-adjusted basis. The performance of the fund really has to be seen in the context of how little directional risk we have in the portfolio.”

The fund suffered the largest monthly drawdown in its history in September 2008, losing 3.41%. Nevertheless, it posted a positive return of over 4% for the year. PPVA returned over 50% in 2007, was up 20% in 2009 and finished 2010 with a gain of over 19%.

The strong performance in the recent market cycle reflects Platinum’s ability “to strike the right balance between diversification, downside protection, non-correlation and having lots of upside optionality in the portfolio,” says Landesman.

Platinum Partners was founded in 2001 by Mark Nordlicht. A graduate of Yeshiva University in New York, he cut his teeth as a natural gas trader and private equity investor in the 1990s before establishing Platinum.

Nordlicht is chairman and chief investment officer of Platinum and oversees strategy selection and asset allocation for its range of funds. Landesman is the general partner of PPVA and has overall responsibility for operations and risk management.

Landesman joined Platinum in early 2010 after spending 25 years in the long-only business. Also a graduate of Yeshiva University, he started his career as an analyst at Sanford C Bernstein, working for the legendary value investor Lew Sanders, before going on to run multi-billion dollar equity portfolios for Federated Investors and JP Morgan. More recently Landesman was head of global growth strategies for ING Investment Management Americas.

Landesman has an interesting take on the hedge fund business. He quit ING to join Platinum in 2010 after growing disillusioned with the world of long-only investing.

“I was in the long-only business for more than 25 years and for the last 11 of those years the equity market returned zero. I realised I couldn’t be satisfied on a professional level in long-only and that I had to find something that offered better returns for investors.

“The decision to join Platinum Partners was a vote against long-only investing and an endorsement of the diversification and non-correlation benefits of hedge funds,” says Landesman.

Nordlicht’s investment philosophy could not be further removed from the dogma of long-only investing. Platinum employs a multi-strategy model and invests across a wide range of non-correlated asset classes and strategies. The emphasis is on diversification, market neutrality and downside protection. Platinum is also open to innovative ideas and is willing to invest in unconventional strategies that offer asymmetric returns on the upside.

PPVA has exposure to around 10 underlying strategies which are selected on the basis of their risk adjusted return potential and non-correlation to each other and the broader markets.