KGR weighs new fund, offering to boost assets

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Asian fund of hedge fund manager KGR Capital is considering launching a new market-neutral fund and a share offering by a related London-listed vehicle in order to feed investor hunger for exposure to Asia.

The share offering, if approved by the listed fund's board, could be as large as 50 million pounds ($99.70 million), nearly doubling the size of KGR Absolute Return PCC Ltd (KGR_p.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), said KGR co-founder and director John Knox.

"We're looking very hard at a further issue of shares ... we certainly have seen some appetite from investors," he told the Reuters Hedge Funds and Private Equity Summit in Hong Kong.

"We'd be hopeful that we could increase it by up to another 50 million pounds."

Knox, who co-founded KGR Capital in 2002 with two former Jardine Fleming executives, said the firm had also seen demand to invest in the segment of its portfolio that is least dependent on rising markets to generate returns.

As a result, it was considering offering a managed account or new fund based exclusively on more market-neutral hedge funds. He said such a fund would probably have the capacity to manage up to $200 million in assets.

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

($1=.5015 Pound)

(Reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson; editing by Kim Coghill)