(Pictured: Steve Kuhn)

The annual AIMA Australia Hedge Fund Forum, to be held at the Sofitel Sydney Wentworth on September 15 this year, will feature Steve Kuhn, partner and co-CIO at Pine River Capital Management, as a keynote speaker.

The Forum, which last year had nearly 300 attendees, is the major conference for alternative strategies – primarily listed strategies – on the annual circuit. It attracts both hedge fund managers and investors, including hedge funds of funds, family offices and big super funds.

Kuhn is fairly well known in Australia because Pine River has developed a substantial investor base in the region, as well as in Asia, Europe and its North American base since formation in 2002. Headquarters are in the small city of Minnetonka, Minnesota, USA. Asian offices are Hong Kong, Beijing and Shenzen.

The firm has about US$16 billion under management across a range of strategies including interest rates, mortgages, equity long/short, event-driven equity and global convertible bond arbitrage.

Prior to joining Pine River in 2008, Kuhn was a portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs in New York and Beijing, from 2002 to 2007, where he was part of the mortgage portfolio management team. From 1999 to 2002, he was a Japanese convertible bond trader at Citadel Investment Group in Chicago and prior to that, he was head of mortgage-backed securities trading at Cargill.