City investors and hedge funds placing multimillion-pound bets undertake extensive research before putting their clients’ money at risk. Inevitably, “there’s an element of it that’s desk-based”, according to one London hedge fund manager, who bets on the outcome of takeover bids for listed companies.
The icing on the cake for him is securing meetings with the key players involved in a deal “and really looking them in the face and seeing their own levels of convictions in a situation”. Yet such meetings often have been impossible during the past 18 months because of coronavirus lockdowns and the widespread switch to working from home. As a result, he said, the appetite for risk had suffered.
+INFO: The Times