In 1998,
Paul Ruddock and Steven Heinz founded Lansdowne. The firm's name comes from Lansdowne Road in
Holland Park where the firm was founded. Originally, it focused on using
fundamental analysis to buy and sell European equities. Its flagship hedge fund launched in 2001, was the Lansdowne's UK equities fund managed by Peter Davies and Stuart Roden who previously worked at
Mercury Asset Management. Lansdowne enjoyed early success and in November 2006 when it sold a 19% stake to
Morgan Stanley Investment Management, it had $12 billion in AUM across five different investment strategies. In July 2020, Lansdowne announced it would close its Lansdowne Developed Markets fund after a long period of poor performance. When it came to short positions, the fund had not beaten the market in aggregate since 2008. From 2016 to 2019, the fund had a compound annual loss of close to 3% while the
S&P 500 had an annual gain of 9.5%. Reasons including underestimating the impact of
Brexit and a $326 million loss after it bet against
Glencore when its share price rebounded. In the first 6 months of 2020, the fund lost 23% due to its long positions on Airline stocks which were affected by the
COVID-19 pandemic. Around half of the fund's investors converted to the Lansdowne Developed Markets Long Only Fund. At this point in time, Lansdowne already had more money in its Long-only strategies. In May 2023, Lansdowne announced it would acquire Crux Asset Management, a long-only boutique firm. ==References==