By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Irth Capital Management, the global alternative asset management firm that invests in both public and private equity, plans to raise a new investment vehicle with the goal of gently but firmly influencing companies, two sources told Reuters.
The new vehicle aims to become a "constructivist" hedge fund where the team will pursue a strategy of suggesting changes to company management and later supporting their strategic transformations and capital needs, the sources
said.
It is not clear how much money Irth is trying to raise for the new vehicle but sources said the amount is what the firm's founders consider to be strategic to their contemplated investments.
The new strategy will be led by Mack Abbot, who will join Irth in New York as a managing director and Head of Constructivism.
Abbot previously worked at activist hedge fund Starboard Value where he led corporate governance research, directed campaign strategy in contested situations and supported portfolio company boards. Before that, he was a member of the Americas stewardship team at investment firm BlackRock.
Irth and Abbot did not respond to email requests for comment.
Irth was co-founded by Sheikh Mohamed bin Abdulla Al Thani, who had been director of the Americas and Business Development for the Qatar Investment Authority, and Matthew Bradshaw, who founded Durational Capital Management and before that was a portfolio manager at hedge fund Millennium Partners.
Investors that push companies to perform better, often called activists, are having a revival of fortunes with both established blue chip agitators like Elliott Investment Management and Starboard Value and newcomers flexing their muscle and pushing for various improvements.
In the first seven months of 2025, activist investors, on average, returned 4.8%, making a strong comeback after the average fund lost 3.2% in the first three months of the year.
Irth's only current publicly disclosed investment is in Papa John's, where it teamed up with Apollo Global Management and approached the U.S. pizza chain to possibly take it private.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
