Each business day HedgeCo.Net keeps you informed with the top hedge fund industry news, opinion and insight from around the globe. From the latest hedge fund launches, to the impact of regulation, competition, and investor activism - we track the topics and people that make a difference to you.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund manager Richard Bookstaber will be speaking at is year’s HedgeWorld Fall Conference. He is the author of “A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation,” a book that pinpointed the market weaknesses that spun out of control to create today’s financial crisis.
“A Demon of Our Own Design” ranked number one on Amazon in finance and was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Loeb Award. Bookstaber was named to this year’s Conde Nast Portfolio list of top 25 technical innovators, joining the ranks of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Eric Schmidt.
He has testified before the House and Senate, calling for greater transparency and improved regulation for Wall Street long before it was fashionable. BOOKSTABER recently worked at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, and before that ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners.
He was in charge of risk management at Moore Capital Management, another hedge fund with over $10 billion in assets. He served as the managing director in charge of firm-wide risk management at Salomon Brothers and was a member of Salomon’s powerful Risk Management Committee. Bookstaber also spent ten years at Morgan Stanley, first designing and marketing derivative instruments, then as a proprietary trader, and concluding his tenure there as Morgan Stanley’s first market risk manager. In addition to A Demon of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007), he is the author of three other books and scores of articles on finance topics ranging from option theory to risk management. He has won the Graham and Dodd Scroll from the Financial Analysts Federation and the Roger F. Murray Award from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance for his research. Bookstaber has a Ph.D in Economics from M.I.T.
The conference is being held at the Metropolitan Club in New York on October 6th, 2009.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.net alex@hedgeco.net HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
Chris Shumway runs a $5 billion hedge fund and is best known for intensive fundamental research to create long/short equity portfolios. He is a ‘Tiger Cub’ because he formerly served as Julian Robertson’s right-hand man while at Tiger Management. Taken from our post on ‘Tiger Cub’ biographies:
Chris Shumway is the Founding Partner of Shumway Capital Partners (“SCP”), an investment management firm founded in 2001. SCP, which manages a multibillion dollar group of private investment funds, uses a private equity-like research model for public market investment on a global basis. Prior to forming SCP, Mr. Shumway was a Senior Managing Director at Tiger Management (1992-1999), an Analyst at Brentwood Associates (1990-1991), and an Analyst at Morgan Stanley & Co. (1988-1990). He received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1993) and a B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia (1988).
The Associated Press – CIT Group Inc. shares plunged in premarket trading Wednesday as the commercial lender is reportedly trying to craft an exchange that would cut its debt and offer bondholders an equity stake in the company in a bid to avoid bankruptcy.
Shares of the New York-based financial firm, one of the nation’s largest lenders to small and midsize businesses, fell 61 cents, or 27.7 percent, to $1.59 in premarket trading.
CIT Group is preparing an exchange offer that would eliminate as much as 40 percent of its more than $30 billion in outstanding debt, The Wall Street Journal said, citing anonymous sources. The exchange would hand control of the company over to its bondholders and wipe out common stockholders, according to the report.
Wall Street Journal – Man Group PLC said its assets are growing again after a 15-month decline that saw the funds it manages nearly halve, as redemptions from institutional clients markedly slowed in its fiscal second quarter.
Funds under management now stand at around $43.8 billion, from $43.3 billion at June 30 and down from their peak of $79.5 billion in June 2008.
Analysts said the news was encouraging and some raised their ratings and price targets. Man Group shares rose as much as 8% and at 0900 GMT were trading at 332 pence, up 23 pence or 7.6%.
Zawya – Shareholders at InvestcorpInvestcorp’s Extraordinary General Assembly today voted to issue a further US$ 40 million of preference shares to meet additional demand from investors who subscribed to Investcorp’s recent capital raise.
Investcorp had received commitments in excess of the $500m of shares that could be issued under the Firm’s current Memorandum of Association. An amendment approved by the shareholders today will enable Investcorp to issue additional preferences shares to cover this oversubscription.
Arizona Star – Centuries ago, historians came up with a classic theory to explain the rise and decline of nations. The theory was that great nations start out tough-minded and energetic. Toughness and energy lead to wealth and power. Wealth and power lead to affluence and luxury. Affluence and luxury lead to decadence, corruption and decline.
“Human nature, in no form of it, could ever bear prosperity,” John Adams wrote in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, warning against the coming corruption of his country.
Lexington Herald – CIT Group Inc.’s shares soared Tuesday on a report that hedge fund manager John Paulson is considering merging the troubled finance company with failed mortgage lender IndyMac Federal Bank. But they plunged after-hours as a separate report said CIT is preparing a debt swap offer that could wipe out taxpayers’ investment or could file for bankruptcy protection.
CIT Group, one of the nation’s largest lenders to small and midsize businesses, spent the summer trying to stave off a potential collapse amid mounting loan losses and rising funding costs. It has been devastated by the downturn in the credit markets and is attempting to restructure its operations to remain in business. CIT in the past relied heavily on cheap, short-term debt to fund its operations – a type of funding that essentially evaporated during the peak of the credit crisis last year.
Bloomberg – New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has alleged that an executive of Clinton Group Inc., which once managed $8 billion in assets, knew of kickbacks made to win $750 million in state pension-fund business in 2006.
Cuomo identifies the person only as a “Clinton executive” in documents detailing his investigation of a Clinton joint venture that won the business. In 2006, George Hall, founder of Clinton Group, was president, supervising executives in six divisions, his company Web site shows. The “Clinton executive” is Hall, 49, two people familiar with the matter said.
Reuters – Adaptec Inc, target of a proxy war led by Warren Lichtenstein’s Steel Partners, said on Tuesday the activist hedge fund wants to gut the data storage technology company, shed assets and create an acquisition vehicle fueled by Adaptec’s stash of cash.
More than three weeks after Lichtenstein began soliciting shareholder votes to remove Adaptec’s chief executive and shrink the board to seven seats from nine, Adaptec’s board responded by questioning Steel’s motives and calling attention to Lichtenstein’s own setbacks of the past year.
New York Post – Sugar is the new crude oil for investment-hungry hedge funds, which are pushing sugar prices near 30-year highs and ushering new global shortages.
After their infamous and massive bets on crude oil sent prices doubling and brought $5-a-gallon gasoline a year ago, hedge funds are now pouring their billions into raw sugar.
Sugar prices have doubled since springtime, causing US officials to consider lifting tariff barriers so that more imported sugar can reach food and candy makers.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – The Dreyfus Corporation, part of BNY Mellon Asset Management, announced the introduction of the Dreyfus Satellite Alpha Fund and the Dreyfus Diversified Global Fund.
“Many individual investors are seeking a professionally managed solution that enables them to invest in non-traditional asset classes that have low correlations to traditional asset classes, especially in the wake of the recent financial crisis,” said Phil Maisano, Vice Chairman and Chief Investment Officer for Dreyfus and Chief Investment Strategist for BNY Mellon Asset Management. “Dreyfus Satellite Alpha has been constructed within a 1940-Act platform to provide exposure to non-traditional asset classes such as commodities, currencies and real estate in addition to inflation-protected securities and global stocks and bonds.
“Dreyfus Diversified Global fund is distinctive among global funds; the underlying funds are managed by an array of BNY Mellon Asset Management affiliates with different points of view and investment philosophies which differentiate this fund from other global funds that only deliver a single viewpoint,” Maisano said.
The Dreyfus Corporation, established in 1951 and headquartered in New York City, is one a leading asset management and distribution company, currently managing more than $400 billion in mutual funds and separately managed accounts.
BNY Mellon Asset Management is the umbrella organization for BNY Mellon’s affiliated investment management firms and global distribution companies.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.net alex@hedgeco.net HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund prime brokers, Northern Trust and Merlin Securities, have set up an agreement which enhances Merlin’s existing broker-dealer custody relationships with Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing and J.P. Morgan Clearing Corp. Merlin’s clients now have easy access to all three providers through Merlin’s award-winning multi-prime reporting platform.
“In today’s market, managers and investors are seeking custodial solutions that reduce their counterparty risk and provide fully integrated, multi-custodian reporting analytics and risk data,” said Stephan Vermut, Founder and Managing Partner of Merlin. “Our agreement with Northern Trust addresses this need for our clients and grants seamless access to a bank custody provider with an unparalleled reputation for quality, safety and stability.”
“Northern Trust is delighted to add Merlin and its clients to our growing hedge fund custody and administration business – which now provides asset servicing for more than $90 billion in assets worldwide,” said Peter Cherecwich , Chief Operating Officer for Corporate and Institutional Services at Northern Trust. “Merlin’s technology, risk analytics, and multi-custody reporting capabilities are a strong complement to Northern Trust’s hedge fund services.”
As of June 30, 2009 , Northern Trust had assets under custody of $3.2 trillion, and assets under investment management of $558.9 billion.
Merlin Securities has offices in New York and San Francisco and is a member of FINRA and SIPC. Recognized as the #1 prime broker for funds less than $1 billion by Alpha magazine’s 2008 hedge fund service provider survey for the second year running Merlin was the top-ranked non-algorithmic-driven firm and second overall among brokerages trading NYSE stocks as measured by arrival price, according to the 2008 Elkins/McSherry annual transaction cost survey.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.net alex@hedgeco.net HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
