Munro?
They are generally OK. Not my first pick by any means, but I think they do at least make the grade. The majority of the team defected out of K2, so they have been working together longer than the firm's short tenure suggests. Griffin was running K2's international equity strategy and generally did an OK job in hitting targets over the longer term.
Their processes are generally OK, but perhaps a bit looser than peers. I'd say they are a bit light on resource wise compared to peers also given their investment universe.
The management fee is broadly comparable to other global L/S strategies, although I'd say that the performance fee structure is flawed. Charging a performance fee against an increase in the whole fund NAV once it hits its performance hurdle is poor. I'd prefer to see only charging on the amount over the hurdle (i.e. net excess returns over the hurdle rate). K2 always did have crap fee structures. Some of it must have rubbed off!
I think one of the biggest issues outside performance is that Munro fails to scale up in term of firmwide FUM. They are only running just over $100m last time I looked, so they won't be profitable. They are being backed by Grant Samuel who are in turn majority owned by a large Canadian firm. So they have some runway to get profitable. But it takes time.
In short, would I invest myself? No. I sue other managers in the global L/S space. But I wouldn't tell people to actively avoid them either.
