GLOBAL – Mercer Investment Consulting has signed an agreement to gain access to research on single strategy hedge funds from Hedge Fund Research.

Under the deal, Mercer and its clients will have access to HFR’s proprietary database on more than 5,500 funds. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Mercer Investment Consulting’s leading presence in institutional investment consulting, both in the US and globally, makes this alignment attractive to us,” said HFR chairman Joseph Nicholas.

“This will help us expand our approach to transparent hedge fund investing among pension plan sponsors, foundations, and endowments.”

Mercer IC global business leader Tim Gardener said the deal would “help us identify opportunities more quickly”.

“Access to HFR’s research is a good complement to the in-house efforts of our own 44 full-time manager researchers.”

And global consulting director Divyesh Hindocha added: “The trend towards increased investment by our clients in single-strategy hedge funds is a function of their desire to capture returns from active management.

“They also recognize the difficulty of capturing value added through traditional long-only investment management.”

In January IPE reported that John Godden, managing director of Hedge Fund Research’s European asset management arm, had left the company.