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On June 1 2008, Jeremy Charlesworth realised an ambition of launching his own investment boutique, offering "clarity of thinking" to high-net-worth investors through two funds, Commodities and Global Opportunities.

Having moved away from the "corporate world" of BDO Stoy Hayward Investment Management, which he inhabited for 10 years, his boutique – Moonraker Fund Management – would offer effectively the same proposition, with almost the same BDO management team, but with a boutique mentality and focused squarely on retail investors.

Mr Charlesworth, chief executive and chief investment officer of Moonraker, says: "BDO had grown enormously, and its wealth management arm, Fitzwilliam, had grown from a very small company – originally there were seven of us – to 300. The thing was becoming much more institutional in its outlook, and I just thought a change was due."

He took with him BDO's TRF Fitzwilliam fund manager Michel Piette, now Moonraker's head of research, and its chief executive, David Thompson, now director and compliance officer for Moonraker.

"We are basically the old team - my old researcher, my old risk manager, my old CEO, me and, to some extent - although he's retired - my old chief investment officer, who isn't officially on the team, but he calls us up now and then," Mr Charlesworth says.

Launching a boutique fund - of predominantly hedge funds - amid the toughest bear market in a generation has been no mean feat, and, naturally, fund inflows have been squeezed.

Mr Charlesworth explains that during the pre-marketing stage, as Moonraker was starting up, it had secured commitments of around £85m. "They said, 'get yourself started, give it a few months, then give us a call in November, and we'll join you'," Mr Charlesworth recalls. "Of course, the world had changed dramatically from April to October. While a lot of that money ran to the hills, and it's not quite £85m any more from the various wealth managers, they are still interested. But everyone is just terrified to make a decision in this environment."

The business was seeded with £10m, although Mr Charlesworth does not like to talk through the details of who is underwriting that commitment and by what ratio: the partners? The secret 'angel' investor? BDO IM's ex-chief investment officer?

How, then, to allay adviser fears that the company's survival may rest on the whim of a single, wealthy, anonymous individual? "We are very well funded thanks to him, and he has given us some of his money to manage as well," Mr Charlesworth says. "He is a significant shareholder, but the management owns the majority of the shares.

"While the seed assets provided by that investor were useful, over our first year, we have built up a diverse range of investors, mostly via the IFA channel."

How much does the 'angel' have invested in Moonraker? "That's confidential," he says. Even though the identity of the 'angel' is only known to you and not in the public domain? "Yes."

Did the partners seed the funding? "We don't want to tell the competition what our AUM is," he responds.

While disclosure of fund and company assets under management is commonplace for Oeics, unit trusts and retail investment managers, the Alternative Investment Management Association points out private businesses have "no obligation to report AUM to parties - other than their clients, the regulator and any counterparties who lend money, such as relevant stakeholders.

"[AUM] is competitively sensitive," Mr Charlesworth says. "Let's just leave it at that."

While he asserts that what makes Moonraker's investment process different is its contrary approach to the way institutional investors 'play' themes, institutional investors actually account for 10 per cent of Moonraker's clients - 2 percentage points more than Fitzwilliam Asset Management.

The type of fund manager Mr Charlesworth looks to invest in sounds remarkably similar to himself: "He's been doing whatever he does for a number of years in different investment institutions and now has set up his own fund," he explains. "With years of experience, he puts a team together of people he's worked with before. The fund consists of his money and his family's money, so there's a huge responsibility to make this work. It's beyond start-up, trying to get established. Then we'll join him."

He prefers funds small, at £50m-£250m, because he believes "they're totally 100 per cent focused" on performance - "they need to build track record". But once an institutional investor shows interest, or as the manager proves himself, "we have a tendency to withdraw".

Mr Charlesworth aims to drop a manager before "he no longer knows every stock in his portfolio because he's servicing investors from a marketing perspective". He argues that institutional interest in a fund "bids up the price" at purchase and floods the market, driving down price at redemption. Applying this theory assists liquidity, he says, as does investing in futures contracts. Three-quarters of each fund is invested in liquid strategies, he says, with no more than 25 per cent of the portfolio allocated to less liquid, smaller company equities.

There is quarterly redemption from each fund, with a 45-day notice period. Moonraker's Commodity and Global Opportunities funds squarely target advisers of high-net-worth investors, with a £15,000 minimum investment barrier. The first seven months' performance for both funds was impressive - outperforming their respective benchmarks by more than 80 percentage points for the Commodity fund and nearly 40 percentage points for the Global Opportunities. But 2009 has been tougher, with 20 and 17 percentage points' underperformance, respectively.