Lars Jaeger

Lars Jaeger (born 1969 in Heidelberg, Germany) is a Swiss-German entrepreneur, financial theorist, alternative investment manager, and author on hedge funds, quantitative investing, and risk management, as well as the history and philosophy of science. He has been an influential voice in the hedge fund industry for many years fostering developments towards more transparency, liquidity, and cost efficiency. He is the founder and CEO of Alternative Beta Partners^[1] and currently serves GAM as Head of Quantitative Research. In 2014, Lars Jaeger published a universal history of science (in German) with Springer-Spektrum. In September 2016 he will publish another book with Springer-Spektrum entailing a discussion of the interplay of science and spirituality.

Background

Prior to founding Alternative Beta Partners in early 2010 Jaeger had served Partners Group as a partner for eight years. He is a co-founder of saisGroup, a hedge funds asset management firm, which merged into Partners Group in 2001. Jaeger started his finance career in 1997 at the quantitative research firm Olsen & Associates in Zurich. He studied physics and philosophy at the University of Bonn in Germany and École Polytechnique in Paris and holds a doctorate degree in theoretical physics from the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems in Dresden, where he also performed post-doctoral studies.

Commentaries on hedge funds

Jaeger frequently comments in print and on television on financial issues, particularly around hedge funds, their return sources and risk management for alternative investment strategies. ^{[2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]}

He has been an early public advocate for independent risk management and transparency for hedge funds ^{[8] [9] [10] [11]} , having designed and run one of the first managed account platforms for these historically rather opaque investment structures in 2000. In 2003, based on his investment experience as well as his academic research on hedge funds return sources, he (jointly with Bill Fung and David Hsieh) coined the term alternative beta ^[12] identifying this as the most important component of hedge fund returns. The research by Jaeger ^[13] initiated an industry wide discussion on the return attributes of hedge funds which starting in 2007 led to the appearance of hedge funds replication products. ^{[14] [15] [16]}

Jaeger is author of several research articles in leading academic journals. He received the Martello award "best paper of the year" by the Journal of Alternative Investment in 2005 for his influential paper "Factor Modeling and Benchmarking of Hedge Funds: Can passive investments in hedge funds strategies deliver?".^[17]

Writing about the history and philosophy of science

In September 2014 Lars Jaeger published “Die Naturwissenschaften – Eine Biographie” with Springer Spektrum, a book, which addresses readers with no or little scientific background in a clear and comprehensible way the history of science from its origins to today.^[18] His next book will be published in September 2016 discussing the interplay of science and spirituality. On www.larsjaeger.ch Jaeger publishs a bi-weekly blog on matters of science, technology, philosophy and spirituality.

Published Books

• Wissenschaft und Spiritualität - Zwei Wege zu den großen Geheimnissen Universum, Leben, Geist Springer-Spektrum, 2016)
• Die Naturwissenschaften – Eine Biographie (Springer-Spektrum, 2015) ^[19]
• Risk Management of Alternative Investment Strategies (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2002) ^[20]
• The New Generation of Risk Management for Hedge Funds and Private Equity (Euromoney, 2003) ^[21]
• Through the Alpha Smokescreen: A guide to hedge fund return sources (Institutional Investors, 2005; second edition 2012) ^[22]
• Alternative Beta Strategies and Hedge Fund Replication (Wiley, 2008) ^[23]

Selected other publications

• Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS): How to construct an Investable Performance Benchmark, Journal of Alternative Investments, Fall 2011
• Insurance-Linked Securities (ILS): What Drives Their Returns?, Journal of Alternative Investments, Fall 2010
• The Road to Hedge Fund Replication: The Very First Steps, Proceedings to the Karlsruhe Workshop in Econometrics: Risk Assessement: Decisions in Banking and Finance, Physica Verlag (2008)
• The new discussion: Replication of hedge fund strategies, AIMA Journal, Summer 2007
• Can Hedge Fund Returns Be Replicated Inexpensively?, CFA Institute Conference Proceedings Quarterly, Summer 2007
• Factor Modelling and Benchmarking of Hedge Funds: Cab passive investments in hedge funds strategies deliver?, Journal of Alternative Investments (2005); awarded with the Martello award "Best paper of the year"
• Sources of Hedge Fund returns, Handbuch Hedge Funds, Uhlenbruch Verlag (2004)
• Sources of Return for Hedge Funds and Managed Futures, The Capital Guide to Hedge Funds, published by ISIpublications (2004)
• The Significance of Liquidity and Transparency for Multi-Manager Portfolios of Alternative Investment Strategies, Fund of funds, Euromoney Publications (2003)
• Sources of Return for Hedge Funds and Managed Futures, AIMA Newsletter, September 2002
• "The Significance of Liquidity and Transparency for Multi-Manager Portfolios of Alternative Investment Strategies", published in S. Jaffer, Fund of Funds, Euromoney , 2002
• "Risk Management and Transparency in the Construction and Monitoring of a Fund of Hedge Funds Portfolio", Global Pension, July 2002
• "The sGFI Futures Index", Journal of Alternative Investments, Summer 2002
• "Risk Management for Multi-Manager portfolios of Alternative Investment Strategies- Part II", Alternative Investment Quarterly (November 2001 and January 2002)
• "Transparency and liquidity needs of alternative investment strategies", IPE publications, November 2001
• "Risk Management for Multi-Manager Portfolios of Alternative Investment Strategies", AIMA Newsletter, April 2001
• "Experimental Verification of Noise Induced Attractor Deformation," Physical Review Letters, No. 82 (11), p. 2274, March 1999.
• "Improved Cost Function for Modeling of Noisy Chaotic Time Series," Physica D, No. 109, p. 59, November 1997.
• "New Results on Generating Partitions of Two-Dimensional Maps," Journal of Physics A, No. 30, p. L567, November 1997.
• "Homoclinic Tangencies and Non-Normal Jacobians - Effects of Noise in Non-Hyperbolic Chaotic Systems," Physica D, No. 105: p. 79, 15 June 1997.
• "Effective Deterministic Models for Chaotic Motion Perturbed by Interactive Noise," Physical Review E, No. 55: p. 5234, May 1997.
• "Unbiased Reconstructing of the Dynamics Underlying a Noisy Chaotic Time Series," Chaos, No. 6: p. 440, September 1996.
• "Molecules Interacting with Start Intense Laser Pulses: the Dynamical Role of Quasistationary States," Journal of Chemical Physics, No. 104: p. 8943, 8 June 1996.
• "Shape Dependencies in Pulsed Laser Matter Interactions", Journal of Chemical Physics, No. 102: p. 7124, 8 May 1995.

External links

• Lars Jaeger’s Homepage

References

1. "Alternative Beta Partners"
2. "Interview Lars Jäger - Schweizer Fernsehen: SF Videoportal"
3. "Lars Jäger über die Eigendynamik der CDS - Schweizer Fernsehen: SF Videoportal"
4. "Dr. Lars Jaeger on Hedge Fund Replication and Alternative Beta - Opalesque.TV Part 1"
5. "Dr. Lars Jaeger on Hedge Fund Replication and Alternative Beta - Opalesque.TV Part 2"
6. "Dr. Lars Jaeger on Hedge Fund Replication and Alternative Beta - Opalesque.TV Part 3"
7. "Lars Jaeger on Wiley Finance "
8. "2002 Article in IPE (pension fund magazine)"
9. "2000 Article on risk management for hedge fund portfolios"
10. "2002 Interview "
11. "2006 Article in Garp Risk Review"
12. "The Risk in Hedge Fund Strategies: Alternative Alphas and Alternative Betas," David Hsieh, Bill Fung, in Lars Jaeger (ed.), The New Generation of Risk Management for Hedge Funds and Private Equity Funds, London: Euromoney Institutional Investors PLC, 2003, 72-87"]
13. "Factor Modeling and Benchmarking of Hedge Funds: Can passive investments in hedge funds strategies deliver?"
14. "Hedge Fund Indices: a new way to invest in alternative investment strategies?"
15. "EDHEC on hedge fund replication"
16. "Comments on hedge fund replication"
17. "Factor Modeling and Benchmarking of Hedge Funds: Can passive investments in hedge funds strategies deliver?"
18. "Die Naturwissenschafen – Eine Biographie"
19. "Die Naturwissenschafen – Eine Biographie"
20. "Risk Management of Alternative Investment Strategies (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2002)"
21. "The New Generation of Risk Management for Hedge Funds and Private Equity (Euromoney, 2003)"
22. " Through the Alpha Smokescreen: A guide to hedge fund return sources (Institutional Investors, 2005; second edition 2012)"
23. "Alternative Beta Strategies and Hedge Fund Replication (Wiley, 2008)"