Albert Saporta - Global Head of Investments & Products
Albert Saporta is Global Head of Investments & Products and became a member of GAM Holding AG’s Group Management Board in October 2023.
Albert Saporta has 40 years’ experience in global financial markets, with over 30 years in the hedge fund industry focusing on special situations and arbitrage. Albert started his career at Paribas in Paris, where he managed the Japan/Asia mutual funds from 1984-85. He joined Merrill Lynch in London as Vice President of Japanese equity sales from 1985-88, covering major UK, European and US institutional accounts. In 1988, he joined UBS Securities in London where he headed quantitative research and hedge fund sales for Japanese equities until 1991. He then joined IFM, at the time the first London-based hedge fund of size and owned by Jacob Rothschild’s St James’s Place and AIG and where he set up and managed relative value global equity arbitrage strategies until early 1995. He then left to set up Geneva-based AIM&R, a hedge fund advisory and research firm, managing the top-performing SOG and SOGAsia funds (the latter in a strategic JV with UOB). In March 2006, Albert sold AIM&R ‘s research and hedge fund businesses to ABN Amro Bank (London). As part of the transaction, he set-up the Special Opportunities Group (SOG) at ABN (based in London, Singapore and Sao Paulo), managing a balance sheet of over US$ 1bn in global arbitrage strategies and special situations. AIM&R was relaunched in 2011 under its current form as a research and trading advisory firm, and advising some of the largest global hedge funds, pension funds, prop trading firms and UHNW family offices. Albert has a master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University (1984), an MBA (1983) and BSc in economics (1982) from New York University, and a Math/Physics degree from the University of Nice (1980). In his career, Albert has lived and worked in New York, San Francisco, London, Paris, Geneva, Tokyo, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow and Tel Aviv. He is fluent in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese. Albert is a French, Israeli and Spanish citizen.
My Insights
Outlook 2025
4 min read
Merger arbitrage to return to the fore
December 2024
GLOBAL SPECIAL SITUATIONS: “Market-neutral strategies that can be tilted to the downside provide useful diversification.”
Active Thinking
8 min read
Active Thinking: Merger Arbitrage – Probability and risk
20 May 2024
The end of the near-zero interest rate era and record-high stock markets in 2024 have raised the expectations bar for equity arbitrage. GAM Investments’ Global Head of Investments & Products Albert Saporta outlines the main strategies and tools at investors’ disposal, both in equity and merger arbitrage, to capitalise on the global opportunity set.