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New York (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund gian Man Group plc announced today that it has signed the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).
“This step is a signal of Man’s continued commitment to responsible investing.” Peter Clarke, Chief Executive of Man, said. As a leading alternative asset manager, we hope that by signing up to the UN PRI we will encourage others in the hedge fund industry to follow our lead.”
The PRI is a framework designed to encourage sustainable investing by incorporating environmental, social and governance issues into investment decision-making and ownership practices. Globally, there are 988 signatories, with 126 of these in the UK. Man is the largest UK-based manager of alternative assets to become a signatory.
“Investing sustainably enhances long-term value and reduces risk which is clearly good for all concerned: investment managers, their clients, society and the environment.” Pierre Lagrange, Executive Committee member of Man and Senior Managing Director of GLG, said. “GLG’s efforts predate today’s formal partnership with UN PRI: addressing the UN General Assembly in 2008 on sustainable investing, implementing technology to enable portfolio managers to make more informed investment decisions using ESG and launching a specific Global Sustainability Equity Fund, aimed at reconciling sustainability and economic returns. We are pleased to be able to commit to widening these efforts by signing up to the PRI.”
Some PRI objective that Man has taken on:
• Investing in technology and training to enable investment managers to take ESG factors into account and encourage listed companies to improve on ESG criteria
• Running the GLG Global Sustainability Equity Fund and managing a climate change strategy on behalf of Virgin Money Unit Trust Managers, both UCITS long-only strategies
• Running an effective Corporate Responsibility programme, as judged by inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index
• By being a signatory to the Carbon Disclosure Project and a member of the FTSE4Good
• By support for independent academic teaching and research at the Oxford Man Institute 2
• By supporting charities and local communities through the Man Charitable Trust, as well as sponsorship of the Man Booker literary prizes
Principles for Responsible Investment
1. We will incorporate ESG issues into investment analysis and decision-making processes.
2. We will be active owners and incorporate ESG issues into our ownership policies and practices.
3. We will seek appropriate disclosure on ESG issues by the entities in which we invest.
4. We will promote acceptance and implementation of the Principles within the investment industry.
5. We will work together to enhance our effectiveness in implementing the Principles.
6. We will each report on our activities and progress towards implementing the Principles.
“Man’s support recognises our commitment to help advance the UN PRI agenda, and attests to the positive effects that normative, international frameworks like the PRI bring to the investment community.” Jason Mitchell, Portfolio Manager, GLG Global Sustainability Equity Fund said. “It also marks the next step in a process that began with our legacy in environmental funds, expanded into broader global sustainability themes and is driving our current work developing the application of sustainability across alternative strategies.”
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Cayman Island based hedge fund Trinity Fund Administration (Cayman) Ltd. is expanding its global network with the opening of a new office in New York City.
“North America is a key market for us, and we are absolutely delighted to be opening up a New York office which will further support our existing clients in the region, as well as bring in new prospective investment managers to our global business.” John McCann, Managing Director of the Trinity Group said. ”We have no doubt that the opening of this office is a significant step in respect to Trinity’s presence within North America and its continued growth prospects”.
The New York office will be primarily a local contact point enabling the firm to better facilitate its North American clients and business partners. The Trinity Group provides a comprehensive range of hedge fund and managed account administration services to investment firms based around the globe, operating fund structures domiciled in several jurisdictions including Ireland, Cyprus, Cayman Islands, Bahamas, Bermuda, BVI, Malta and the Channel Islands.
Trinity now operates globally from offices in Dublin, Cayman, Cyprus and New York.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Covenant Financial Services, LLC., the management company for the Covenant family of target-return, global macro hedge funds and separately managed accounts, has changed its trade name to “Covenant Global Investors.”
The change was made to better reflect the firm’s current position in the market and the completion of its evolution from a boutique advisory firm started in 1984 to the $320 million AUM global macro investment manager that it is today.
Over the past year, as Covenant Global Investors has expanded its focus from high net worth investors to include institutions and as its assets have grown to approximately $320 million, it wanted to emphasize the firm’s global macro, target-return strategy where investors risk preferences are matched with funds and separate accounts that strive to deliver returns within a targeted range, regardless of market conditions. The term “global” is also deliberate, as Covenant Global Investors explores investment opportunities anywhere in the universe of assets in its quest to deliver alpha. The one word that the firm never considered changing was the first and most defining in their brand, “Covenant.”
“We’re wired differently at Covenant,” said Steve Shafer, CIO and Portfolio Manager of Covenant Global Investors. “Because of the firm’s history as a private wealth manager and our fiduciary responsibility to our clients, we have an uncommonly strong relationship with our investors – whom we call ‘partners’. This covenant with our investors is the defining feature of our corporate DNA and the reason that we continue to keep that word front and center in our branding.”
The name change took effect on January 1st, 2012. The firm’s website, www.CovenantInvestors.com will remain the same.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Rothstein Kass has released “Women in Alternative Investments – Industry Outlook and Trends,” a new report focused on trends impacting core business functions at alternative investment firms.
The research features the investment and operational insights gained through a third quarter survey of 189 executive-level women investing capital through hedge funds, private equity funds or venture capital funds. The report highlights the industry, capital-raising and investment insights of women fund managers and explores whether gender impacts core business functions such as capital-raising.
Findings indicate that while nearly 70 percent of respondents anticipate that the next 18 months will be challenging for the industry, they are more optimistic about investment outlook and new fund launches within that same period. Nearly 65 percent of respondents are confident that there will be attractive investment opportunities, and slightly more than half of respondents indicated that they plan to launch a new investment fund within the next 18 months.
“Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the number of successful women in the alternative investment community. Women have attained leadership roles in every niche and have added to the rich diversity of the hedge fund, private equity and venture capital sectors, to the benefit of investors and partners. These women are having a major impact on the direction of the industry,” said Kelly Easterling, a Principal in the Financial Services Practice at Rothstein Kass and Principal-in-Charge of the Firm’s Walnut Creek office.
Most survey respondents believe it is more difficult for women-run funds to attract capital. Slightly more than 40 percent of respondents believe capital-raising is more difficult for women-run funds because women often lack the investment track record their male peers have. About a third of respondents believe that women’s capital-raising efforts are hindered by the stereotype that women are more committed to family and personal responsibilities than their career. Slightly over 30 percent believe it is harder for women to raise capital because they have less access to investor networks.
Other notable findings include:
Nearly 70 percent of the women surveyed expect the next 18 months to be more difficult than the preceding period. In spite of this, slightly over 60 percent of survey respondents anticipate an increase in new fund launches over the same period.
Although most respondents believe fund launches will increase in the next 18 months, respondents were divided as to whether more women would participate in these launches. Yet more than half of our survey respondents are planning to introduce a new fund themselves in the next 18 months.
Over 70 percent of respondents plan to raise capital in the next 18 months.
Family offices (52 percent), pension funds (52 percent), high-net worth individuals (50 percent), foundations (41 percent) and endowments (35 percent) are seen as most likely sources of new capital. Sovereign wealth funds (25 percent) and “other foreign sources of capital” (18 percent) were also viewed as significant sources of capital.
In an uncertain economic climate, over 65 percent of participants are confident that there will be attractive investment opportunities in the next 18 months.
A majority of respondents expect terms for new capital to be less favorable to fund managers in the next 18 months.
To help facilitate women’s advancement in the industry, respondents noted that women need greater access to roles which enable them to establish an investment track record, more women need to be recruited into the industry, and institutional investors should consider women’s representation in investment roles when making allocations.
The report also identifies the factors most critical to respondents’ success in the industry. The most important factors were having a strong professional network, having strong mentoring relationships, willingness to take risks, strategic career planning, and strong support networks.
“One of the goals of 85 Broads is to use our platform to match great ideas with great talent,” explainedJanet Hanson, Founder and CEO of 85 Broads. “In recent years, we’ve seen greater numbers of senior-level women strategically investing significant capital in start-up companies and funds led by women. Senior women are making these investments, in ventures often led by young women, not out of an obligation to give back or for charitable purposes, but because they are investing in real talent. I think this trend will continue, and that we’ll see more women with capital investing in funds directly. This is an encouraging development for the industry as a whole.”
Emerging-hedge-fund managers are getting more attention from institutional investors because they tend to produce better returns than larger, more established funds, but industry insiders disagree about the extent of the outperformance.
Hedge fund investment consultants and early-stage fund-of-hedge-funds managers are critical of industry-produced and academic analyses that don’t correct for survivorship and backfill biases found in the various public databases that aggregate self-reported hedge fund returns. They contend that statistical studies including these two biases produce artificially high returns for both small/young and large funds.
One of the industry’s most widely read performance comparison studies, by PerTrac Financial Solutions LLC, showed that small hedge funds — managing less than $100 million — each produced 360 basis points of annualized outperformance over large funds — those managing more than $500 million each — over the 15-year period ended Dec. 31.
Over the same period, hedge funds in business less than two years returned an annualized 526 basis points more than those in operation for more than four years, PerTrac researchers found.
Hedge funds boosted wagers on higher commodity prices for the first time in three weeks as the outlook for the U.S. economy improved.
Money managers increased combined bullish positions across 18 U.S. futures and options by 0.7 percent to 566,494 contracts in the week ended Nov. 29, Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show. Investors trimmed their bearish holdings in copper for the first time in four weeks, and pared bets on lower wheat and soybean prices.
The value of world equities rose more than $2.2 trillion last week as the MSCI All-Country World Index climbed for five consecutive days, the longest rally since October. The Federal Reserve and five other central banks made it easier and cheaper for banks to obtain dollars in emergencies and China, the biggest consumer of everything from energy to copper to soybeans, lowered banks’ reserve requirements for the first time since 2008. The U.S. jobless rate fell to a two-year low in November.
“We’re more on a moderate growth path, not the death spiral people feared two months ago,” said Michael Strauss, who helps oversee about $27 billion of assets as the chief investment strategist at Commonfund in Wilton, Connecticut. “That puts a little bit more support into commodities.”
(Bloomberg) — Hedge funds retreated from bearish oil bets as rising tension with Iran, OPEC’s second-largest producer, pushed crude to more than $100 a barrel.
The funds and other large speculators increased wagers on rising prices by 2.6 percent in the seven days ended Nov. 29, according to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Commitments of Traders report on Dec. 2. They had cut so-called long positions, bets on rising oil, by the most since August the previous week, the Washington-based CFTC said.
Oil snapped a two-week losing streak as the U.S., U.K., Canada and the European Union targeted Iran’s financial sector and crude exports to deprive it of cash that might be used in nuclear or missile programs. Futures rose 4.3 percent last week, partly on optimism that European leaders are moving closer to resolving the region’s debt crisis.
“Hedge funds were caught flatfooted” by the previous week’s trades, Phil Flynn, a senior market analyst at PFGBest in Chicago, said in a telephone interview on Dec. 2. “They’re scrambling to get back in on the long side.”
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Former President Bill Clinton is reportedly teaming up with two of his former aides, Declan Kelly and Douglas Band, starting a private equity fund and global hedge fund consulting company. Also said to be involved is former British PM Tony Blair.
The State has already approved Clinton’s involvement in the private equity fund Teneo Capital, The Huffingtom Post reports:
“President Clinton is involved purely in an advisory capacity, and his compensation is confidential,” Matt McKenna, a Clinton spokesman, told the Huffingtom Post. Kelly confirmed that Clinton will be compensated but declined to go into details.
The new venture is to be based in Northern Ireland and “Seems well-poised to build on its access to and knowledge of Irish government.” The paper reports.
“During a summit at Ireland’s Dublin Castle in October, the former president announced plans to hold a Global Irish Economic Forum in New York in 2012, to be sponsored by Teneo Capital. Gathered at the Dublin summit were Bono, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny and Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore.
Kelly, Teneo Capital’s cofounder, was named in 2009 by Secretary of State Clinton to be special economic envoy to Northern Ireland. Kelly had previously founded another hedge fund, Financial Dynamics, which he sold in 2006 to the company now known as FTI Consulting.
“We don’t have an equity fund, and we don’t have a hedge fund. We’re looking to establish one, but we haven’t done it yet,” Kelly said.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – SYZ & CO affiliate, SYZ Asset Management, is supplementing its alternative management offering with a managed accounts platform (segregated funds), which is now available in addition to its existing tailored alternative mandates and funds of hedge funds.
SYZ Asset Management intends to make this new service a benchmark in its field. The platform, which is the result of close cooperation between SYZ Asset Management and UBS Investment Bank, features substantial advantages in terms of transparency, risk management and reporting. As part of this cooperation.
SYZ Asset Management selected the UBS platform for the flexibility it offers to hedge fund managers, its extensive reporting and highly sophisticated risk management. Compared with competing structures, it is a highly attractive platform for hedge fund managers, as it does not necessarily require hedge funds to change their liquidity frequency or prime broker, enabling them to retain the same strategy as in their original hedge fund.
UBS Investment Bank, for its part, is the operator of this managed accounts platform. This cooperation between SYZ Asset Management and UBS Investment Bank will become effective at the beginning of December 2011.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund giant Man Group plc is establishing its presence in China with the appointment of Yifei Li as Country Chair, China. Li has 18 years of senior management experience, having successfully led the expansion of several multinational companies in China.
“This appointment signals the importance of China to Man’s future development.” Peter Clarke, Chief Executive of Man, said. “We are already extremely well represented in terms of trading, sales and distribution in Asia and expansion in China is the natural next step. Yifei Li is widely recognized in the region for her extensive experience managing multinationals’ growth in the region and we are thrilled that she will be leading Man’s drive to establish its presence there.”
“I’m thrilled to take on this role at one of the world’s leading asset management companies at a time when the financial industry is booming in China,” said Yifei Li. “Man is extremely well placed to take advantage of this trend and I look forward to leading Man’s expansion into China.”
Prior to her employment by Man, Li worked representing GLG Partners, which was acquired by Man in October 2010. She was previously Managing Director of MTV Networks Greater China and Chief Representative of Viacom China.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – One of Goldman Sachs’ former directors, Rajat Gupta, is turning himself over to the FBI today, the Guardian reports.
Gupta faces insider trading charges as an unindicted co-conspirator in the criminal case against hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. So far he denies any wrongdoing.
“Any allegation that Rajat Gupta engaged in any unlawful conduct is totally baseless.” Gupta’s attorney, Gary Naftalis, said, “The facts demonstrate that Mr Gupta is an innocent man and that he has always acted with honesty and integrity. He did not trade in any securities, did not tip Mr Rajaratnam so he could trade, and did not share in any profits as part of any quid pro quo.”
The SEC originally brought civil fraud charges against Gupta in March for allegedly tipping Rajaratnam off to insider information in the SEC vs. Galleon case.
Gupta is alleged to have told Rajaratnam of a $5 billion investment by Warren Buffett in Goldman Sachs before the information became public.
Rajaratnam was taken into custody in New York on Oct. 16, 2009 in what is being called the USA’s largest hedge fund insider-trading scheme. He is being accused of insider trading and securities fraud, generating as much as $49 million in profit. The majority of the stocks involved are in technology, including, IBM, Intel, Akamai Technologies Inc, Polycom Inc, Hilton Hotels Corp, Google Inc, Sun Microsystems Inc SUNW.TI, Clearwire Corp, Advanced Micro Devices, ATI Technologies Inc and eBay Inc.
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A full range of single and advanced order types, including market, stop, limit and contingent orders (OCO, If/Then and more);
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New York (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund gian Man Group plc announced today that it has signed the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI).
