Monte dei Paschi sniffs out demand for pricey new debt

French fund house Axiom Alternative Investments has launched a market neutral credit derivatives fund for recent recruit Laurent Henrio.

Henrio will act as lead manager on the Axiom Credit Opportunity fund, which will target structural price anomalies within the credit derivatives market and opportunities created by the ongoing regulation that forces banks to reduce their risk and improve their return on equity.

The new fund aims to achieve stable and uncorrelated returns to traditional asset classes and maintain a market neutral profile while embedding tail hedge features. In doing so, it will focus on liquid investment grade and high yield credit in Europe and North America.

Henrio will manage the fund with the support of Adrian Paturle, who has been a fund manager at Axiom since its foundation.

Henrio joined the group in September 2018 from Société Générale where he worked as a global head of credit trading activities. The French group, which has $1.3 billion in assets under management took on the new manager to run its new synthetic credit fund.

The French asset management firm has offices in Paris and London and was created in 2009, launching its flagship Axiom Obligataire fund the same year. It now runs a total of eight funds.