An asset manager run by Deerfield Capital Management Founder Gregory Sachs has repurposed a REIT fund into a continuously offered, closed-end interval fund centered on structured notes.
“The fund is well-suited for a diversified, income-generating alternative asset allocation in an investor-friendly 1940 Act structure that trades at NAV with the efficiency and transparency of a single ticker symbol,” said Sachs, who founded Deerfield in 1993 and grew the firm to $17 billion in assets under management while acting as chairman and CEO over the next 14 years.
With headquarters in Nashville and offices in New York, Chicago and Miami, SCG’s team of quantitative investors and data scientists is led by Chief Analytics Officer J.D. Opdyke, who was previously quant lead at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.
The Alternative Strategies Income Fund was launched in September 2010 and operated by Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management for 11 years a strategy focused on privately held REITs. Enter SCG Asset Management, a derivative-based solutions specialist launched in 2020 by Sachs. SCG took over management of the fund in December 2021 and introduced a new strategy involving a portfolio of structured notes diversified across time, industry, sector and historical pricing patterns.
The fund sold all legacy assets in the third quarter of 2023 and is now fully invested in the strategy, which trades in sectors as varied as internet media and services, renewable energy equipment, sporting goods and automotive sales.
On Monday, SCG announced that the fund is available to any investor through an advisor, including retirement accounts, with investment minimums as low as $5,000 and no accreditation requirements.
In addition to growing the relaunched fund, SCG expects to expand its asset management platform as well as the utilization of its proprietary Selector model to products including separately managed accounts, wrapped derivative solutions and investable rules-based indices for certain institutional partners. The firm is also seeking to source strategic investments that are additive to its platform.
