Updated with correction April 1
BNY Mellon Asset Management is closing one of its three hedge fund-of-funds units, Ivy Asset Management, terminating all but a handful of key Ivy employees and encouraging existing clients to move their investments to its EACM Advisors unit, which offers separately managed hedge funds of funds, confirmed multiple industry sources who asked for anonymity.
Sources said most of Ivy's employees have received their pink slips, and the unit's investor and consultant relations professionals are contacting consultants and investors about the closure.
BNY acquired Ivy in 2000. Ivy's assets have declined from a peak of more than $15 billion at the end of 2006 to less than $5 billion as of Dec. 31.
Ivy's current assets under management total about $2.5 billion, with the bulk of those assets managed for four or five large institutional investors in separate accounts, said a source with knowledge of the situation.
Mike Dunn, a BNY Mellon Asset Management spokesman, declined to comment directly on Ivy's closure and said in an interview that “the strategic review of the business is continuing.”