Rauf Ashraf, Emerging Hedge Fund Manager, Diversifies to Distressed Opportunities

Rauf Ashraf has been identified by Goldman Sachs as a rising star and recommended by the former Fidelity Investment's $60 billion dollar Magellan Fund Manager.

Phoenix AZ (PRWEB) May 11, 2008 -- The most successful investors and hedge fund managers specialize in identifying lucrative opportunities where others see none, or where others fear to tread. Such opportunities are sometimes found in the often-harrowing arena of Distressed Firm investing. Some famous success stories of other hedge fund manager's such as Eddie Lampert have seen huge returns from their investment in firms like Kmart, which have also been shining examples in the distressed arena.

Rauf Ashraf (www.cikm.org/Rauf-Ashraf.php) has been identified by Goldman Sachs as a rising star and recommended by the former Fidelity Investment's $60 billion dollar Magellan Fund Manager, and has been featured in numerous industry publications including Hedge Fund Alert to MARS Hedge Fund Newsletter. He has worked in the hedge fund business for ten years. Having been in the top 1% of manager's raising sizable capital in their first year, he managed a diversified long/short US-based strategy fund with peak assets above $50 million during the first year. His strategy has recently included distressed investments. Prior to that he was an Analyst with Essex Investment Management where he supported both institutional long only funds in addition to the firm's hedge funds with assets in excess of $5 billion. Between 1997 and 2001 he was at one of the largest private equity firms where he was a founding team member for the $1 billion-plus Greenberg-Summit Partners hedge fund started by Fidelity Investment's second largest fund manager (Larry Greenberg) and a leading venture capital firm (Summit Partners). He started his professional career as an Analyst at one of the largest firms on Wall Street, Fidelity Investments where in addition to working with Larry Greenberg (managed $20 billion) he helped to formulate and automate Magellan ($57 billion) fund manager's custom research templates with his respective stock selection criteria.

Industry press credits him with interacting with over 1000 different CEO's and CFO's of publicly traded companies around the world where he modeled out future earnings which along with this proprietary screening systems seems to be key to his investment methodology. Industry press material used to substantiate this article also include the following:

Analyst Developing Quantitative Fund

An analyst whose resume includes positions at Essex Investment Management, Greenberg-Summit Partners and mutual-fund heavyweight Fidelity Investments is preparing his own hedge fund.

Rauf Ashraf (www.cikm.org/Rauf-Ashraf.php) expects to start trading the entity, called Empyrean Fund, with about $25 million on March 1. He'll run the long/short vehicle -- which combines quantitative and fundamental-analysis strategies with a bottom-up stock picking approach -- via his Boston firm, Ash Capital. Ashraf expects about 75% of his investment ideas to spring from quantitative research.

Boston Start-Up Seeks Non-US Money

A start-up manager in Boston recently launched a non-U.S. version of his long/short vehicle, which has generated large returns during its first four months of trading. Rauf Ashraf, who has worked at a few high-profile investment shops, started trading his Ash Master Offshore Fund late last month with $25 million. The vehicle mimics Ashraf 's $22 million Ash Master Fund, a quantitative- and fundamental-analysis vehicle that earned a 29% return between its April 10 inception and the end of August. Ashraf is also beefing up the investment team at his firm, Ash Capital Management.

www.hfalert.com/NewPages/Index.cfm?Article_ID=1044669690&HideBanner=Yes

Contact information for Rauf Ashraf can be found below.

www.cikm.org/Rauf-Ashraf.php

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