BUSINESSMAN BRUCE Ashmore has resigned as fund manager to a poorly performing hedge fund run by investment management company Pilot View Capital, a firm whose products are targeted at wealthy professional investors.
His resignation as fund manager, effective since the end of June, was acknowledged last evening by Pilot View co-founder Johnny Fortune.
"This is an amicable parting of the ways," he said, declining to comment on the reasons for Mr Ashmore's departure.
The Irish Timeswas unable to contact Mr Ashmore, a former head of equity trading at Goodbody Stockbrokers.
In 2006 Mr Ashmore took a legal action against Goodbody and the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority claiming that a delay in securing authorisation for Pilot View Capital was due to an allegedly unsatisfactory reference from the broker.
The High Court was later told that the settlement of the case involved "no payment of damages or costs" to Mr Ashmore, who was understood to have sought damages of some €22 million.
Mr Ashmore was fund manager of Pilot View's Atlas Fund, which is known to have suffered badly in the current turmoil on equity markets.
Mr Fortune would not say yesterday whether newspaper reports of a 70 per cent drop in the fund's value in the 10 months to December were accurate.
Shares in the fund currently have a net asset value of €12.10. Citing the company's policy of not providing any public information about the fund's scale, performance or investors, Mr Fortune declined to say whether reports that the shares were listed at €100 when the fund started business in February 2007 were accurate.
Neither would he say whether Mr Ashmore had sold his 26.57 per cent stake in the Pilot View Capital management company when he ceased to be a director of the business.
A filing stamped in the Companies Office on June 25th shows that the termination of his directorship took effect on January 23rd.
The Atlas Fund is a sub-fund of Pilot View Capital's second fund, known as Pilot View Fund 2, and has a minimum investment threshold of €250,000.
The principals in Pilot View Capital are investors in the fund, according to the company's website, which describes the aims of the fund as follows: "Atlas is an acronym for aggressively traded long and short. As with our other funds, it is an equity fund focused primarily on Ireland and the UK."
The website continues: "It invests in a relatively small number of stocks giving it high stock concentration risks at times.
"It will use gearing aggressively and it can also go short . . . its objective is to give above-average absolute returns in all market conditions but with the understanding that its investment approach could lead to higher volatility."
