London-based
Harewood Solutions, part of
BNP Paribas, is to launch the BNP Paribas Comac fund, a long/short commodities fund that provides access to the the French bank’s Comac Long Short TR Index.

The index provides diversification across 25 commodities including energy, metals and agriculture. It benefits from both differing fundamentals and technical analysis of the commodity spectrum with the investment objective of generating alpha regardless of the direction of the commodity market.

The index employs the commodity expertise of the commodities investment manager
Tiberius Group. It follows an investment strategy based on weekly recommendations from the group and a quantitative engine run by BNP Paribas, and so combines discretionary and systematic asset management in a single strategy. 

Commodity indices can be heavily skewed towards the energy sector and this fund aims to provide investors with a potentially more diversified exposure to the commodity universe. The fund will have daily liquidity and gains are expected to be taxed as capital. 

"We are launching the fund in to the

UK market to take timely advantage of the current potential in this arena as well as to provide investors with alpha generating access to commodity future investments.  Our investors are looking for opportunities that they perceive not only help to diversify the risk in their portfolios, but more importantly in this climate, that can generate real alpha," said
Ryan Rogowski, head of Harewood Solutions.

Harewood’s assets under management total in excess of $1 billion. In January, the company added the Enhanced Income Fund to its stable of investment products.