FT : Equity chief steps down at Carmignac
The head of European equities at Carmignac Gestion, whose personal investments were the subject of an internal probe, has resigned from the €52bn French asset manager.
Muhammed Yesilhark, who joined Carmignac in London in January 2014, resigned from Carmignac “for personal reasons”, according to the firm. His last day was on Friday. Mr Yesilhark declined to comment.
Mr Yesilhark was among a team of four that joined Carmignac in January 2014 following the closure of SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund in London, part of Carmignac’s expansion plans in the UK.
Personal investments made by Mr Yesilhark and his colleague Malte Heininger were the subject of an investigation at Carmignac last year.
When Mr Yesilhark bought a position in oil and gas company Sequa Petroleum in September 2014, the move was questioned internally. At the time, the oil and gas company’s only asset was part-ownership in a Kazakh exploration licence. It had made a loss of €4.2m in 2013 and the stock, listed on the lightly regulated Euronext Marché Libre in Paris, was thinly traded. Sequa is a start-up company backed by German entrepreneur Lars Windhorst and his investment firm, Sapinda.
Within weeks of buying Sequa, Carmignac reversed the trade and sold the stake back to Mr Windhorst. It later emerged that on the same date Carmignac acquired the position in Sequa, Mr Yesilhark and Mr Heininger had invested with their personal accounts in a separate deal promoted by Sapinda and its related brokerage, Anoa Capital.
The deal — a pre-IPO convertible bond called Cloud Hotel Investments, a German real estate fund — had a clear upside: the fund managers were able to buy at a discount and sell once it listed. Mr Windhorst said last year that the investment was a “good deal”, but the pair did not receive preferential treatment.
At the time, Carmignac said it “deals with every situation in a way that is fully compliant with applicable regulations and rules of ethics”.
Mr Yesilhark ran two funds at Carmignac, both of which have lost money over the past year. Carmignac Grande Europe, a long-only European equities fund, lost 12.93 per cent in the past 12 months. Meanwhile, Carmignac Euro-Patrimoine, a European hedge fund, dropped 10.72 per cent in the same period and is in the fourth quartile of performers, according to Morningstar
Carmignac is looking for a replacement for Mr Yesilhark, whose portfolio management responsibilities have been assumed by colleagues Mr Heininger and Huseyin Yasar, another portfolio manager.