Hedge Fund US Leadership Summit 2023

How do current market conditions impact the hedge fund space? Beyond performance and capital raising, what should our collective top priorities be?
With shifting economic sands, can the hedge fund space now come into its own? What is the marketplace narrative you should be using for investors?
How does this opportunity to market your strategy and raise capital work alongside new SEC rules – have the new marketing rules et al, changed the sector’s approach...
...and has this scrutiny changed your reporting?
Are you still considering launching new products and what are investors asking for: new investment opportunities or better performance from existing products?

How can managers stake a claim to being ESG compliant, particularly when most have no/little influence over the underlying investment?
Rolling out ESG standards and practices at the management firm level vs underlying funds
Stewardship and ESG committees – how do you proactively engage with investors and what are their top concerns and reporting needs?
Can following strict ESG guidelines help with performance or does it inhibit room for growth?
What does your firm need to know about greenwashing rules and ESG regulations at home and abroad?

How are IR and capital raising teams managing the shift from manual to more automated processes?
What are the benefits and the pressures of this transition? What have investors been saying about this change? How has their experience been impacted?
Change management and cost effectiveness inevitably play a key role in transitioning away from manual processes. How are managers tackling these issues?
Has this shift led to managers being able to reach a wider and more global audience?
In the past, managers have had to deal with a cumbersome paper trail. How is this documentation process changing now that it is being digitized?
What is the outlook for additional solutions to help managers leverage the use of technology in their marketing, fundraising and investor onboarding?

Is it still a buy or build decision?
Change acceleration (inflation, Interest rates, war, commodities,…), does it reveal some tech stack bottlenecks? Where?
Can last-mile analytics give you an edge over your competitors?
Fundraising - do your systems facilitate expeditious responses to the questions from your existing and potential investors? Static reports versus self-service analysis, do you see a growing demand for on-the-spot user-defined metrics modelling?
What role does artificial intelligence and machine learning play in your analytics tech stack, and how are you using these technologies to improve speed, accuracy, and flexibility?

Outsourcing, now a strategic imperative for hedge funds – what are the current drivers and trends and what are the metrics – other than budgetary savings – of measuring success?
Pushing the boundaries of outsourcing to other higher value activities – where to next? Are you even examining the ‘fractionalisation’ of once key staff – CTO, CFO…and even the COO. What are the benefits and risks here? Is the fractional COO a step too far? Without a full-time ops head, who pulls all the outsourced services together?

Outsourcing, now a strategic imperative for hedge funds – what are the current drivers and trends and what are the metrics – other than budgetary savings – of measuring success?
Pushing the boundaries of outsourcing to other higher value activities – where to next? Are you even examining the ‘fraction-lisation’ of once key staff – CTO, CFO…and even the COO. What are the benefits and risks here? Is the fractional COO a step too far? Without a fulltime ops head, who pulls all the outsourced services together?
What other areas of your ops could be outsourced?
Extension of outsourcing to front office
Promise of technology adoption to integrate all these services – is it possible to do this coherently, cheaply and achieve accurate reporting?
Co-sourcing and in-sourcing versus standard outsourcing – co-sourcing approach winning with larger funds, but what does it also mean for smaller players?
Benefits and trade-offs
Decision considerations for co-sourcing versus standard outsourcing
Lessons from pandemic
Cybersecurity not an afterthought any more for private credit managers
Hybrid operating model and implications for talent management – keeping all the stakeholders aligned and ‘art of the flexibility’ for talent management

Jennifer Wood, Managing Director, Global Head of Asset, Management Regulation & Sound Practices, AIMA (moderator)
Kelly Branco, Chief Financial Officer & Chief Compliance Officer, Tremblant Capital Group
Sean Cumiskey, Co-Chief Operating Officer, Yiheng Capital Management LP
Katherine Dowling, Chief Compliance Officer & General Counsel, Bitwise Asset Management
Ryan Krebs, Head of Client Success, Drawbridge
David Zeiden, Executive Managing Director, Chief Compliance Officer & Chief Regulatory Counsel, Sculptor Capital Management