HSBC will make its fund-of-hedge fund GH Fund available to Australian investors before the end of the year.
The fund will be launched under the name GH Diversified Strategy Fund and will be available to retail investors.
"We've already got a number of positive ratings from the research houses and we'll have the fund up and running by the end of the year," HSBC Australia head of global investments Charles Genocchio told InvestorDaily.
HSBC is planning to hold a roadshow in the first week of December, and HSBC Alternative Investments global head of hedge fund portfolio management Tim Gascoigne, who runs the underlying GH Fund, will visit from London to inform investors about the investment strategy.
The original GH Fund has been running since June 1996 and aims to deliver an absolute return from selected investments in a number of hedge funds.
The Australian fund-of-hedge fund industry has had a difficult time during the financial crisis, which resulted in a number of frozen funds and even the wind-up of others.
But Genocchio said these troubles have created opportunities for the introduction of a new fund in Australia.
"We are pretty positive with the hedge fund-of-fund type, because our group has been doing it for 20 years," he said.
"We haven't had any frauds, we haven't had any funds that have blown up and we've got quite a few other things in the fund that will make it shine from the ones that are in Australia."
HSBC has already entered discussions with platforms about the inclusion of the fund.
