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.
Bloomberg: Asia-focused hedge funds that were started with the help of a major backer after the 2008 credit crisis are shutting down as a shrinking pool of key investors makes it harder for them to raise capital.
Isometric Investment Advisors Ltd. decided in December to close after its largest startup investor said it would withdraw its cash. Black’s Link Capital Ltd. closed after its biggest investor, a U.S.-based fund of hedge funds, pulled its capital last year, said two people with knowledge of the matter.
New hedge funds that began trading after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., including those run by refugees from investment banks, were expected to lead a revival for the industry. Instead, managers with more than $5 billion have lured the bulk of allocations, while a more recent crop of large startups are diverting investors from smaller competitors.
“Funds of funds have traditionally been early-stage investors,” said Sam Tabar, head of Asia-Pacific capital introductions at Bank of America Corp. (BAC)’s Merrill Lynch & Co. unit. “As this sector has retracted somewhat, it has made it more difficult for some managers to move from startup phase to critical mass.”
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Los Angeles-based multi-strategy hedge fund manager, Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC., has announced the final close of the Tennenbaum Opportunities Fund VI, LLC. With capital commitments of $530 million from new and existing limited partners, the fund will focus on discounted and debt-for-control oriented market opportunities as well as complex, directly-originated financings.
“The successful fundraising stems from our consistent performance and from investors’ confidence in our ability to execute on quality investments,” said Mark Holdsworth, Managing Partner and co-founder of TCP. “We look forward to great opportunities over the coming months.”
TCP invests primarily in private and public companies across a broad range of industries. In 2009 TCP raised $454 million through its DIP Opportunity Fund, LLC, bringing its two-year fundraising total to approximately $1 billion. Since its founding, TCP has invested approximately $10 billion in almost 200 companies where the Firm can play a meaningful role.
“We are very pleased with the support we received from new and existing investors,” said Howard Levkowitz, Managing Partner and co-founder of TCP. “Many of the world’s most sophisticated institutional investors have chosen to invest with us and we are excited to continue working on behalf of our investors.”
Limited partners in the Fund include both public and corporate pension funds, insurance companies, other financial institutions, foundations, endowments, family offices and high net worth individuals.
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP served as Fund counsel while Greenhill & Co., LLC served as the Fund’s exclusive global placement agent.
Editing by Alex Akesson
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Telegraph – The Frenchman’s reinstatement a month after his suspension came as Gartmore’s head of compliance Gerry Harvey left the quoted fund manager.
Mr Rambourg’s suspension sent shockwaves through the market and shares plunged in Gartmore, where he and fellow fund manager Roger Guy regularly generated about 40pc of group revenues controlling about a fifth of Gartmore’s £21bn of assets.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – The SEC has charged two investment advisers with securities fraud for misleading investors about the financial condition of three hedge funds they managed, and misrepresenting that they controlled the funds’ investment and trading activities when in fact they were being handled by Arthur G. Nadel.
The SEC alleges that Sarasota, Fla.-based Neil V. Moody and his son, Christopher D. Moody, distributed offering materials, account statements, and newsletters to investors that misrepresented the hedge funds’ historical investment returns and overstated their asset values by as much as $160 million.
According to the SEC’s complaint, hedge funds Valhalla Investment Partners L.P., Viking IRA Fund LLC, and Viking Fund were controlled by Nadel with no meaningful supervision or oversight by the Moodys. The SEC charged Nadel with fraud last year and obtained an emergency court order to freeze his assets.
“The Moodys led investors to believe that they were faithfully managing funds invested with them,” said Glenn S. Gordon, Associate Director of the SEC’s Miami Regional Office. “Instead, they abdicated their responsibilities to investors and ignored warning signs that should have alerted them to the fraud that was occurring all around them.”
Mr. Moody’s attorney, Jeffrey L. Cox, of Sallah & Cox, LLP. stated “The SEC’s complaint does not allege that Chris Moody knowingly intended to harm investors. The complaint alleges recklessness which Mr. Moody neither admits nor denies. Mr. Moody has cooperated from the outset with the receiver in the recovery of assets and will continue to do so.”
In its complaint against the Moodys, the SEC seeks permanent injunctions, financial penalties, and disgorgement of illegal gains. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations, the Moodys have consented to permanent injunctions against future securities fraud violations and are bared from associating with any investment adviser for five years.
Three quarters of the world’s senior banking and compliance officers polled as part of a wide-ranging survey by Complinet, a hedge fund compliance company, said they are expecting the next financial crisis will strike within the first half of this decade, the company said.
The survey found that the majority of regulatory experts questioned predicted the next significant economic downturn before 2015. 77% said recent reforms were insufficient to avoid another crash similar to the 2008 collapse.
The survey of 232 global compliance officers was made up of 34% from the banking sector, 9% insurance, 32% securities, 7% legal, 18% others.
“The continuing lack of company transparency and accountability to the markets and the public makes the possibility of another crisis almost assured,” said one of the businesses questioned.
The Complinet survey also showed that only 40% thought their firm had changed its approach to compensating employees based on a better understanding of risks associated with the business. 91% recognised that the current bonus culture is resented by those outside the financial services industry.
But the survey also showed that 62% of senior management believe they’re putting the right controls in place.
“Regulatory reform and implementation of effective compliance solutions are clearly vital to avoid another crash,” says Paul Johns, Vice President of Global Markets at Complinet.
“The key message from this survey is financial institutions must ensure they have enough compliance resource to navigate through the regulatory maze and reduce the risk of falling foul of the rules.”
Voiceof San Diego – San Diego County’s pension fund is slashing its $1 billion hedge-fund portfolio and acknowledging that the investments it once championed have become too risky and no longer make sense.
The board of the San Diego County Employees Retirement Association voted unanimously Thursday to reduce the size of its hedge-fund portfolio by more than half. That will free up $600 million, half of which will be held as cash. The rest will be reinvested in the portfolio.
The pension board also agreed to curb the aggressive strategy the $7.5 billion fund used to finance its hedge fund investments. Under the "alpha engine" strategy, the county bought financial derivatives known as swaps that were essentially bets on the market. Much like bets on a Chargers game, the swaps cost nothing initially, which freed up cash for hedge fund investments. When the market rose, the swaps made money, but in recent months, they cost the pension fund millions of dollars. Last month, the board voted to free up $100 million in cash to protect against further declines.
Reuters – Belgian banking and insurance group KBC said on Monday that it will discontinue some of its hedge fund-related activities and that the move could lead to some redundancies.
KBC said it will also close its Alternative Investment Management service.
"KBC FP (Financial Products) has conducted a strategic review of operations and decided to discontinue some of its hedge fund-related activities," KBC said in a statement, adding that the remaining positions of existing investors will be managed until they reach maturity.
"This decision has already led to and could lead to further internal transfers and, where no suitable alternatives are available, to redundancies," the company said.
guardian.co.uk – The Independent’sJeremy Warner is not convinced and argues that the failure is entirely their own. In the Daily Telegraph, Richard Fletcher explains that though Horlick blames US regulators for their lack of oversight her clients should be asking her some tough questions. In The Times, Daniel Finkelstein says what you need to understand about Charles Ponzi’s scheme is that when he started it, it wasn’t a Ponzi scheme. It just got out of hand.
David Wighton says the sums involved are breathtaking. He suggests there must be a worry that other boom-time frauds will now be exposed by the bust. David Aaronovitch says by last week he was ready for Bernard Madoff. He had read JK Galbraith’s The Great Crash 1929 and taken his point that in boom times the rate of embezzlement grows because the promised rewards don’t seem as absurd as they actually are and the rate of discovery falls off. In the Daily Mail, Alex Brummer says that the £33bn fraud by Madoff could spell the end for the most controversial investment vehicles of recent years: hedge funds.
Reuters – Even some strong hedge fund managers may not survive the ongoing credit crisis due to a lack of funding or credit, the president of hedge fund John W. Henry & Co. said on Tuesday.
"There are going to be some firms that have good strategies that were strong in terms of discipline and their strategy itself, but may not survive this because they don’t have the assets or the funding to be able to survive," Ken Webster, president of the firm, said at the Reuters Investment Summit in New York.
The hedge fund industry has been hit hard by the worst global financial and economic crisis in decades.
Bloomberg – Tozai Investment Advisory Ltd., a Tokyo-based hedge fund adviser, is closing its business after market losses and investor redemptions cut its funds’ assets to zero from a peak of $70 million, a senior partner said.
The Cayman Island-based Trident Pacific Japan Absolute Return Fund, which Tozai advises, was closed last month, Angus McKinnon, senior partner at Tozai said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. The fund, launched in December 2004, invested in Japanese equities using a so-called long-short strategy that bets on rising and falling stock prices, McKinnon said.
Global hedge funds are bracing for the worst year on record as more than 80 firms liquidated hedge funds, segregated assets or limited withdrawals following the MSCI World Index’s 44 percent drop this year and tightening credit conditions. Citadel Investment Group LLC, the hedge-fund manager founded by Kenneth Griffin, said yesterday it will close its Tokyo office, eliminating 12 jobs.
Seattle Times – Bill Fleckenstein, a well-known Seattle investor who bets exclusively on falling stocks, is shutting his 12-year-old fund and starting a new one that will buy equities, too.
Fleckenstein said he doesn’t think the worse is over in the U.S. stock market. Yet he no longer wants to limit himself to so-called short bets.
"I’m not wildly bullish right now," he said. "The market hasn’t reached its ultimate lows, but we might be in a trading range for a long time."
Short sellers have been the best-performing hedge funds this year, up 32 percent through November, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research, whose data show an industry average decline of 18 percent during that period. Fleckenstein, founder and president of Fleckenstein Capital, declined to comment on the fund’s size or its returns.
Chicago Tribune – The Citadel Investment Group will shutter its Tokyo offices and cut 37 jobs from its Asian operations.
The Chicago-based hedge fund will still have a presence in Hong Kong, where 25 positions will be cut, the company said Monday. The investment firm founded by billionaire Ken Griffin in 1990 will maintain 25 to 30 staffers in Hong Kong. A regional group that invested in companies undergoing mergers, asset sales or lawsuits will be cut.
Citadel’s decision comes after its two primary funds reported losses of 47 percent through November. The firm manages $16 billion in assets.
