Brickwood Asset Management

Investment decisions sit with David Allen, the founder and Chief Investment Officer, who traded European equities at BlueCrest Capital before launching the firm in 2015 (per Financial News, 2018). The research desk has included former SAC Capital traders, and all positions are run through a central risk book with Allen retaining final say on sizing and exits. A small investment committee reviews exposures weekly but does not override the CIO on individual name calls.

Brickwood is structured as a single-manager hedge fund, authorized by the FCA, and invests institutional capital — not family wealth. The firm runs one strategy (long/short European technology equities) and has purposely avoided multi-strategy or platform models. It is not a family office and does not manage separate accounts targeting private wealth.

The firm operates on a band that keeps net exposure below 40% in most market environments, with gross exposure typically between 100% and 150%. This discipline was formalized after the 2018 Q4 selloff, where Brickwood held positive returns while the European tech sector drew down. The book overweights single-name hedges rather than broad index protection, aiming to isolate stock-specific risk.

The team relies on fundamental, bottom-up research augmented by channel checks in the UK, Germany, and the Nordics. They target companies with recurring revenue and thin sell-side coverage, which reduces crowding from multi-strategy funds. Short ideas frequently originate from forensic accounting review of European IT-services firms, where the team has identified structural revenue headwinds (per EuroHedge, 2021).

No. Since launch in 2015, the firm has maintained a single-vehicle structure and has not expanded into UCITS, long-only, or private investment strategies. The manager has also not opened additional offices, operating solely from London with the same regulated permission under the FCA to deal in investments as principal (per FCA Register, 2024).

Brickwood avoids European large-caps, biotech, and resource-extraction equities, as those sectors do not fit their research-intensive, low-coverage approach. The firm also stays away from crossover investing into private companies, keeping the entire book in liquid, publicly listed securities to align with the tight liquidity terms offered to institutional investors.

The book concentrates on the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Nordics, where the firm has local research contacts. France and the Benelux appear as secondary exposures, while Southern Europe has historically been underrepresented. North American and Asian equities are outside the mandate.