IAM O’Connor Event Driven UCITS Fund

IAM O’Connor Event Driven UCITS is a global event driven multi-strategy fund managed by Blake Hiltabrand (Head of Merger Arbitrage Research) and Joe Newell (Head of Merger Arbitrage), who are supported by 7 investment professionals. The strategy seeks to invest in securities of companies where a significant event has taken place or they believe will occur with an active allocation across three core event driven strategies: merger arbitrage, capital structure arbitrage and SPACs. While the merger arbitrage sleeve exhibits a short volatility bias, the capital structure arbitrage and SPAC sleeve counter this with an inherently long volatility bias. The bulk of the portfolio lies within merger arbitrage trades (c. 60% of risk, 50-70 positions), which are traditional hard catalyst deals where a clear timeline and payoff structure exists. Capital structure arbitrage is allocated 10-40% of risk and consists of relative value trades expressed through multiple instruments, typically involving some combination of convertibles, credit, options, and stock. SPACs take up c. 0-15% of risk, with the team looking for the opportunity to arbitrage the discount to cash or play the re-rating on acquisition. The fund has scaled rapidly since its launch in February 2021 and currently has $317m under management.