Financier Alan Howard Owns 5.8% of German Crypto Asset Management Firm Iconic Holding

Alan Howard, the co-founder of macro hedge fund Brevan Howard, has invested in German crypto asset manager Iconic Holding, according to the shareholder list of the German Commercial Register, a registry of public companies.

  • While declining to provide specifics, a spokesman for Howard said the billionaire investor considers the size of the investment to be “negligible.”
  • While it is unknown what Howard considers “negligible,” how much the stake is worth now or when he first invested in Iconic, the well-known financier owned around 5.8% of the company as of May, the filing says.
  • Howard has been an active investor in the crypto market for some time. Elwood Asset Management manages his personal digital assets, and he was recently involved in the funding round for the FTX crypto derivatives exchange, the largest funding round in crypto history. 
  • In June, the billionaire participated in an extension of the Series B funding round for crypto custody business Copper, and he also made a $4 million investment in crypto trading app Kikitrade. The veteran hedge fund manager is one of the largest shareholders in digital asset manager CoinShares and in March led a Series A funding round for crypto custodian Komainu. 
Read more: Alan Howard Adds to Crypto Spending With Investment in Two Startups
  • In April it was reported that Brevan Howard, the fund he helped found, was to make direct investments in digital assets and planned to allocate up to 1.5% of its main fund to crypto.
  • Iconic Holding is a crypto asset manager headquartered in Frankfurt, with offices in Singapore, New York and Dubai. The company has three business units, including Iconic Funds, which offers crypto-linked exchange-traded products and index funds; Iconic Lab, a venture capital group that focuses on blockchain and crypto companies; and a fund-of-fund platform called Multi-Manager.
  • The Iconic Holding website lists its strategic investors as Cryptology Asset Group Plc, Finlab AG and HTGF (High-Tech Grunderfonds).
  • An Iconic Holding spokesperson declined to comment.