Boussard & Gavaudan published their annual report on Friday 24th. This showed that, over the course of 2014, the NAVs for the Euro and Sterling shares increased by 6.85% and 5.29% respectively, whilst the market price improved by 11.73% and 16.71%. This was a good result both in NAV and share price terms as, by contrast, the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index fell by 0.6% and the HFRX Equal Weighted Strategies Index fell by 0.5%.
They breakdown the contributions from various strategies employed by the Master Fund to performance. Volatility strategies contributed 1.9%, Equity strategies 1.4%, Credit strategies 2.3%, Trading 1.2% and Others 0.2% to make a total of 7% from the Master Fund. Other investments added a further 1.2%. Againts that, fees and other expenses came to 3.4% so the net return from investment activity was 4.8%. What boosted returns was the share buy-back programme, this added 2.1% to the NAV.
BGHL / BGHS : Boussard & Gavaudan gets almost a third of return from buy-backs