Investment Strategy
The Berenberg Merger Arbitrage is an equity-based absolute return fund that pursues a specialised merger arbitrage strategy. The fund aims to achieve absolute returns while protecting investors' capital by exploiting price differences arising from publicly announced mergers, acquisitions, corporate restructurings or similar transactions. The fund aims to achieve long-term capital growth and outperform the money market (as measured by the €STR).
The fund's investment strategy aims to generate attractive absolute returns, regardless of general stock market performance. Due to its historically low correlation with traditional market indices, the fund offers investors diversification within the overall portfolio. Through broadly diversified investments in various M&A transactions, sectors and regions, the fund aims to achieve a stable risk/return profile with low volatility. The investment strategy aims to exploit inefficiencies in the pricing of company acquisitions and mergers and is based on the difference between the market price of a target company and the announced acquisition price.
Further details on the opportunities and risks of this fund can be found in the sales prospectus.
Exposure over time
Currencies
Sectors
Countries
Asset classes
Top Holdings
Monthly market comment
As of month-end, the merger arbitrage fund is invested across 32 positions, while maintaining liquidity for new opportunities: 23% Europe, 66% North America, and 11% APAC. Toward year-end, we recorded several deal milestones, including the acquisition of WonderFi, highlighting the ongoing consolidation in the crypto sector, as well as the completed transactions of Covestro and Kellanova. The year continued to be shaped by the operational ramp-up, dominated by structural start-up delays. Since inception, the strategy has been intended to employ leverage and short exposure. However, the required prime brokerage setup was not fully operational at launch and remains only partially available to this day. As a result, the fund operates with reduced flexibility, which is particularly constraining for new stock-for-stock transactions such as Paramount / Netflix. Even at year-end, deployability remains limited, with clear consequences: subdued volatility—less than one quarter of historical levels—while risk efficiency remains broadly stable. The voluntary reimbursement of the management fee provided tangible relief to investors and underscores our commitment to resolving the operational constraints in a timely manner. We expect to regain full flexibility shortly. M&A market conditions remain robust, and the outlook for 2026 is positive.
Portfolio Management


