Atlanta, GA Nov, 17, 2009 Scirage Capital Partners is preparing to launch its
flagship options strategy fund. The new fund, which is still unnamed, will have a
minimum investment of $250,000 and no lockup period, "because of the
pioneering of sorts as a minority hedge fund," says Michael Bach, the fund
manager and founder.
Michael Bach Atlanta, who began his finance career nearly sixteen years ago as the CEO of a
small-cap private equity firm, founded Scirage just ahead of the nations financial
crisis, noticing that there were virtually no African American asset managers at
all.
"I’ve always know that there were limited numbers of African American’s in the
finance industry," says Bach. The Fund’s investment focus will be on short term
investment contracts, investing in mostly in put and call options, which Bach
describes as "an any-market strategy."
The firm expects to begin accepting outside capital at the beginning of
December, and thus far has capital commitments for $15 million, mostly from a
single investor. Scirage currently employs 9 people, most of which have finance
industry backgrounds. Michael Bach Atlanta says Scirage will in the future target high-net-worth
individuals and institutional investors as clients, but for now will concentrate on
further developing its investment strategy.
The biggest hurtle Bach believes his firm will have to overcome is making
investors feel comfortable with the idea of investing large sums of capital in
alternatives and in minority firms. "One thing that causes investors to hesitate is
when they hear the words 'alternative investment' they think 'risk,'" he says. "Our
goal is to expand our capital base to our current capacity of $100 million by the
first quarter of 2011, but in order to do that, we will have to lessen risk and help
investors overcome their fears, and we do that with a successful track record.”
