Sthenos Capital, a London-based hedge fund manager that once ran almost $600m (€450m) of assets, is to close at the end of this month after underperformance led investors to pull out.

Jack Masri, a principal at Sthenos Capital, said: "The fund was down 5.5% this year. We lost about half our assets in the last two quarterly redemption periods. The principals felt the firm would have had to downsize to continue and that this would have been too disruptive to the investment process, putting remaining investors at risk."