Mr. Samson: The history of the firm dates back to January, 2007 when we formed Vista Research and Management (Vista) focusing exclusively on Listed Private Equity. Vista serves as the investment advisor to the Listed Private Equity Plus Fund (ticker:LPEAX), the first actively managed mutual fund in the U.S. to invest exclusively in Listed Private Equity and Venture Capital firms traded daily on stock exchanges around the world. The Fund's objective is to provide traditional mutual fund investors an opportunity to invest in the Private Equity asset class.
Historically, Private Equity investment has been the exclusive domain of institutional and high-net-worth investors through private investment partnerships. Typically, these partnerships are available only to investors that meet accreditation requirements, have high minimum investments of 1 million or more, impose long lock-up periods and offer little oversight by government regulators. As a result, about 94% of the investing public has been prohibited from participating in the growth associated with Private Equity investment. Since the introduction of the Listed Private Equity Plus Fund in mid-2007, Vista has, in essence, democratized Private Equity.
This is an important development for financial and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) in how they can better serve their clients since Listed Private Equity is among the best performing asset classes over the long term. In the last ten years ending 12/31/09 it has outperformed the S&P 500 by over 1,100 basis points annually.
In addition, and perhaps more importantly, Listed Private Equity also has only moderate correlation to the S&P 500, providing investors with an additional diversification benefit to go along with the strong performance.
As a traditional open-end mutual fund, all investors can gain access to Private Equity with a minimum investment of 2,500 in LPEAX. The Fund only invests in Listed Private Equity firms that are traded daily on stock exchanges around the world making the Fund a totally liquid investment vehicle. Investors in LPEAX may invest today and redeem shares at their will without any impediments such as the long-lock up periods associated with traditional Private Equity partnerships.
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