UK – Deutsche Bank has signed a distribution deal with Hedge Fund Research Europe, under which the bank will be able to offer products based on the HFRX Indices to European institutional and retail investors.

HFRE’s parent company HFR launched the daily investible index HFRX in March. It says Deutsche joins Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, Barclays Capital, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns as banks that will be marketing and distributing products based on the HFRX 'family' of indices.

“All five banks started to formally offer products to their investment clients this month following a two-month European roadshow to introduce the indices to fund management institutions,” it added.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Jean-Marie Barreau, Deutsche’s head of structured and investment products, said the new investible hedge fund indices meet Deutsche Bank's liquidity and transparency requirements.

HFRX consists of eight primary hedge fund strategy indices and an asset-weighted Global Index each providing a “statistically pure proxy” to the universe of hedge funds.