Who we are

Niels Clemen Jensen has over 30 years of investment banking and investment management experience. He began his career in Copenhagen in 1984 before moving to Shearson Lehman in London in 1986. In 1989 he joined Goldman Sachs and became co-head of its U.S. equity business in Europe in 1992, a post he held until 1996, when he joined Oppenheimer to manage its European business. In 1999 he re-joined Lehman Brothers, now in charge of European Wealth Management. In 2006 he was appointed Director of Trafalgar House Trustees Limited, advising one of the UK’s leading corporate pension funds on its investment strategy. 

Niels founded Absolute Return Partners in 2002 and is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer.

Niels spends much of his time writing. He is the author of “The End of Indexing”, the highly renowned Absolute Return Letter and has contributed a chapter to “Harriman’s New Book of Investing Rules”. Niels  has written for numerous other publications and is often quoted in the financial press.

Peter Kim joined ARP in 2012 as a Financial Analyst and became a Partner in 2018. He has over 15 years of experience in business operations and management, regulatory reporting and hedge fund operational due diligence.

He started his career at a corporate finance boutique in the City of London focusing on capital raising for SMEs and middle & back office support for a commercial real estate development fund. Peter holds a BEng (Hons) in Aerospace Engineering from University of Southampton, and completed a master’s degree in Reliability Engineering and Mathematics with a distinction from City, University of London.

Peter became Managing Partner in 2021, having fulfilled the Chief Operating Officer role since 2019. Peter is responsible for the firm's overall strategic, financial and operational decision making, as well as risk management, client services, and third-party manager operational due diligence.

Steven Bartel has over 20 years experience in hedge funds and investment banking. 

He began his career at KPMG in South Africa where he managed audit teams primarily in the financial services sector. In 1998 he moved to London to join Schroders as Group Risk Manager before moving to Lehman Brothers in 2000 as CFO for the European Private Wealth Management business. In March 2005 Steven joined GSA Capital as their Finance Officer before making the move to Absolute Return Partners in October 2007 as Chief Operating Officer. 

Steven remains a Partner and a member of the Firm’s Management Committee.