By Maiya Keidan and Lawrence Delevingne
LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Mako Global Investors (MGI) is shutting a European equities hedge fund it launched just 19 months ago after lacklustre returns and plunging investor interest, a source close to the firm told Reuters.
MGI's CT Invest Fund, which peaked at $100 million (£75.7 million) in assets at April 2015, joins 200 hedge funds who closed in the first half of 2016, data from industry tracker Preqin showed.
The fund was managed by Christian Thum and made a range of bets on the rise and fall of European financial and industrial company share prices, mainly in German-speaking countries.
The fund was up 7.04 percent a day before Britain's referendum on membership of the European Union but surrendered those gains after the shock 'leave' result triggered global stock market convulsions and steep falls in the value of listed European financial companies, the source said.
The decision to close follows a challenging period for the fund, which delivered returns of below 1 percent last year and a loss of 3.74 percent in its inaugural trading year of 2014.
It had $20 million in assets at the time of its closure and was seen as no longer economically viable due to ongoing business costs, the source said.
Former Marble Bar Asset Management and BTG (LON:BTG) Pactual trader, Thum first drew the attention of investors after securing 20 percent gains as a proprietary trader for Mako Group at its offices in London's City financial district in 2013.
At its high point the ill-fated CT Invest Fund made gains of 16.15 percent in just four months between January and April 2015. But those gains were all but wiped out by the end of the year, documents seen by Reuters showed.
(The story was refiled to change the name in paragraph 7 to Mako Group, not specifically MGI)