Bennelong Long Short Equity Management (BLESM) is an Australian Absolute Return Manager established in 2002 by Richard Fish in conjunction with the Bennelong Group.

Fish was joined by Sam Taylor in 2008, with Sam Shepherd joining the team from Credit Suisse in 2012, where he ran the Melbourne institutional equities desk. Shepherd's 20 year career also included experience with JP Morgan and Norwich Investment Management. Sam assumed the role of CIO in 2017 following Fish's retirement.

Sam heads a four person investment team, including Taylor, (Head of Research) and Senior Investment Analysts Steven Lambeth (2014) and Justin Hay (2016) all of whom are shareholders in the management company.

Bennelong Funds Management develops and distributes funds around the world through their Australian businesses and wholly-owned subsidiaries, BennBridge UK and BennBridge US. Their boutique asset managers invest in Australian, UK and global equities. Globally, they have more than AUD15 billion in assets under management and advice (as at 31 May 2021).

In Australia they currently support eight teams and manage 13 funds. Bennelong is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Bangarra Group (formerly known as the Bennelong Group), a privately-owned company encompassing a number of independent businesses.

Bennelong Long Short Equity Management applies a qualitative stock selection process to construct a diversified portfolio of paired securities based on relative value. The Bennelong Long Short Equity Management strategy invests primarily in the S&P/ASX 100 and is dollar neutral at cost.

In a typical environment the Fund will hold around 70 stocks comprising 35 pairs. Each pair contains one long and one short position each of which will have been thoroughly researched and are selected from the same market sector. Whilst in an ideal environment each stock's position will make a positive return, it is the relative performance of the pair that is important.

As a result the Fund can make positive returns when each stock moves in the same direction provided the long position outperforms the short one in relative terms. However, if neither side of the trade is profitable, strict controls are required to ensure losses are limited.

The Fund uses no derivatives and has no currency exposure. The Fund has no hard stop loss limits, instead relying on the small average position size per stock (1.5%) and per pair (3%) to limit exposure. Where practical pairs are always held within the same sector to limit cross sector risk, and positions can be held for months or years.

The Bennelong Market Neutral Fund, with same strategy and liquidity is available for retail investors as a Listed Investment Company (LIC) on the ASX.