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 13 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 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.

Alison Major Lépine joined Absolute Return Partners in 2015 after almost 10 years at the UK Railways pension scheme, where she was responsible for over £1bn in various absolute return strategies. Previously, she was an Investment Manager at IKANO across a number of asset classes. Prior to joining IKANO, she worked as an Associate at Russell and as a Senior Consultant at FactSet. 

Alison started her career as a trainee at the European Commission. She holds an MA (Hons) First Class in Economics from the University of Edinburgh and a Masters (PhD programme) from the European University Institute in Florence. She has completed the Executive Management Programme at the London Business School, holds the IMC and is a CFA charter holder.

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 has relocated back to South Africa to focus on building our franchise in that country, which will be branded as AbsoluteGrayCapital, a joint venture with SA based investment manager Grayswan. The initial focus will be the launch of multiple thematic style funds based on the megatrends that guide ARP’s investment philosophy.

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