
Akos Beleznay
Senior Vice President, Investments
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- Full Name
- Akos Beleznay, PhD
- Title
- Head of Manager Research (formerly Chief Investment Officer, James Alpha Advisors)
- Firm
- Easterly Asset Management / Easterly Funds LLC (formerly James Alpha Advisors, LLC / James Alpha Management)
- Firm Type
- Alternative-investment asset manager (registered mutual funds and fund-of-hedge-funds / multi-strategy products) — *not an angel/seed-stage investor, despite the stub data*
- Investment Stage
- N/A — allocates institutional capital to hedge fund managers and alternative strategies rather than to startup rounds
- Target Company Profile
- Hedge fund managers and alternative-strategy sub-advisers subjected to manager research, due diligence, and risk screening
- Sector Focus
- Alternative investments — event-driven, relative value, hedged equity/high income, real estate securities, and multi-strategy alternative income
- Geographic Focus
- United States (global manager universe)
- Location
- New York City, New York, USA
Background
Dr. Akos Beleznay is a career alternative-investments allocator with roughly 30 years of industry experience. At James Alpha Advisors, LLC he served as Chief Investment Officer, sitting on the firm's Investment Committee and overseeing manager research and asset allocation across the James Alpha suite of registered alternative funds. After James Alpha was rebranded and folded into Easterly Asset Management, he continued in a senior research capacity and is currently Head of Manager Research at Easterly, responsible for manager research, due diligence, and risk management across all Easterly products and prospective affiliates.
Before James Alpha, Beleznay was Chief Investment Officer at Riverside — the asset-management arm of Hedge Fund Research, Inc. (HFR) — where he managed more than $1 billion in fund-of-hedge-funds products. Earlier he was Chief Investment Officer at Commerce Asset Management and CSG Asset Management, where he ran funds of hedge funds and a hedge fund index-replication product. From 2002 to 2010 he was Director of Consulting Research at Equitas Capital Advisors, LLC, and from 2003 to 2010 he was Chief Investment Officer of the Equitas Evergreen Fund LP, a $300 million fund of hedge funds.
His work centers on allocating capital to and monitoring third-party hedge fund managers — building diversified alternative portfolios and applying quantitative risk oversight — rather than making direct company or venture investments. He has been described as having successfully allocated capital to hedge funds for over 15 years.
Academically, Beleznay holds a PhD in Physics from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary and an MBA from Tulane University, a quantitative-plus-finance background that maps to his manager-selection and risk-modeling role.
Investment Thesis & Focus
- Allocates institutional/fund capital to hedge fund managers and alternative strategies, not to startups, seed rounds, or angel deals (the "Angel Investors / Seed Round" labels in the source stub do not match verifiable records).
- Core disciplines are manager research, operational and investment due diligence, and portfolio risk management across a multi-manager platform.
- Strategy exposures span event-driven, relative-value, hedged high income, hedged equity, real estate securities, and multi-strategy alternative income, consistent with the James Alpha / Easterly fund lineup.
- Emphasis on diversification and downside/risk control in constructing alternative portfolios — a fit with his physics/quantitative training and fund-of-funds heritage.
- No publicly stated check size, target company profile, or venture-style thesis could be verified; those lines are omitted rather than guessed.
Notable Investments
- James Alpha Event Driven Fund (tickers JAESX/JAEIX) — event-driven alternative mutual fund on the James Alpha platform.
- James Alpha EHS Portfolio (Easterly Hedged Equity / hedged strategy; JAHAX/JAHCX) — fund he was cited as managing.
- Easterly Hedged High Income Fund (INCCX, formerly James Alpha Hedged High Income) — hedged income strategy.
- Easterly Multi-Strategy Alternative Income Fund (JAAMX) — multi-strategy alternative income vehicle.
- Equitas Evergreen Fund LP — ~$300M fund of hedge funds he ran as CIO (2003–2010).
- Riverside / HFR fund-of-hedge-funds products — >$1B in FoF assets managed as CIO prior to James Alpha.
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