Julius Baer is launching a new fund in Switzerland, to participate in the market growth of the region around the Black Sea.

The fund will invest in equities of Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Russia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

The fund, which was registered in Luxembourg at the end of 2006, has already shown an impressive performance of over 7 per cent to its benchmark, MSCI Emerging Europe, and already has over SFr100 million invested.

The IMF estimates the various Black Sea countries to show a GDP growth of between 3 per cent and 8 per cent in 2007, compared to the average GDP growth forecast for the developed countries in the European Union of 2.4 per cent.