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.
Reuters – China’s $300 billion sovereign wealth fund is looking at directly investing in funds that could benefit from falling equity prices, a top manager at Pyramis Global Advisors said on Monday.
China Investment Corp [CIC.UL] spent last year diversifying its investments into commodities, real estate and other asset classes, though the ability to short stocks means the state-backed investor would employ a strategy traditionally used by hedge funds.
SeekingAlpha – Given the market disaster that was 2008, one would expect that any alternative investment firm that dipped its toe into the equity offering market is worse for the wear for becoming publicly held.
From London-based and London Stock Exchange-listed Marshall Wace on down to the many littler guys who lined up to list on the Irish exchange and others, both for permanent capital raising and for getting the rubber-stamp approval of being listed, it’s been a kind of given that in hindsight the efforts of going public weren’t really worth it.
Reuters – Dilan Siritunga, a longtime executive at the hedge fund firm Atticus Capital LP, is planning to open his own firm, according to a person familiar with his plans.
Siritunga will become the latest in a string of fund managers to leave Atticus, one of the hedge fund industry’s biggest and best-known activist investors until its founder liquidated two portfolios last year.
BusinessWeek – The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the worlds’ largest sovereign wealth funds, has invested as much as 45 percent of its assets in developed markets, the fund said in its first annual review.
“We began in 2009 to cautiously lift our exposure to higher growth markets, which proved effective as the recovery began to take hold,” Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the fund’s managing director said in the 2009 report. “Considerable uncertainty remains” in 2010, he said.
WSJ – In a letter dated March 1, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called out the European Union’s proposed “alternative investment fund” regulations as protectionism in drag. He’s right to worry.
The proposal, which European finance ministers will discuss tomorrow in Brussels, would effectively bar hedge funds and private-equity funds from marketing themselves throughout the EU unless those funds are managed inside the bloc. The list of new requirements on location, leverage and disclosure for outside players is supposed to protect EU investors from shady offshore operators.
BusinessWeek – Cheyne Capital Management (U.K.) LLP, a hedge fund firm which oversees $5.5 billion, is betting on an improvement in Britain’s real estate market.
Cheyne is boosting the allocation of lower-rated mortgage debt in its Queen’s Walk Investment Ltd. fund in expectation home-loan defaults will continue to decline, partner Shamez Alibhai said in an interview. Queen’s Walk invests most of its 120 million euros in mortgage-backed securities.
MineWeb – Two major hedge funds belonging to uber investor George Soros and renowned fund manager John Paulson have placed their bets on troubled gold junior NovaGold Resources.
NovaGold has announced it closed its offering of 18,181,818 shares of the company at a pric
Reuters – The former chief trader and chief investment manager of Boston Provident LP pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of stealing $3 million from the Manhattan hedge fund firm.
The executive, Ezra Levy, 32, admitted in a plea proceeding before U.S. District Court Judge Kevin Castel that last year he conducted trades that were profitable for him, but a loss for the hedge fund.
Bloomberg – Cheyne Capital Management (U.K.) LLP, a hedge fund firm which oversees $5.5 billion, is betting on an improvement in Britain’s real estate market.
Cheyne is boosting the allocation of lower-rated mortgage debt in its Queen’s Walk Investment Ltd. fund in expectation home-loan defaults will continue to decline, partner Shamez Alibhai said in an interview. Queen’s Walk invests most of its 120 million euros in mortgage-backed securities.
Bloomberg – El Tejar SA, Argentina’s largest agricultural producer, is weighing an initial public offering in New York to tap rising investor demand for farming assets.
The closely held grain and oilseed grower, backed by London-based hedge fund Altima Partners LLP and private equity firm Capital Group Companies, plans to become a public company within three years and will also consider selling shares in Sao Paulo, Chief Executive Officer Oscar Alvarado said yesterday in an interview.
MarketWatch – An outgoing voicemail message at the office of Bellman Walter Capital tells callers that the San Francisco-based hedge-fund firm shut down at the end of 2009.
Former SAC Capital traders Rich Walter and Jeff Bellman started Bellman Walter in the spring of 2008, according to industry publication AR. The financial crisis hit soon after, triggering record industry losses and an unprecedented wave of investor redemptions.
BusinessWeek – European Central Bank council member Christian Noyer called for greater regulation of credit- default swaps, saying hedge funds are exploiting low interest rates to increase speculation with the securities, according to an interview in L’Agefi newspaper.
“Is it normal that hedge funds can take such large positions using significant leverage financed by central banks with particularly low interest rates? Obviously not,” Noyer was quoted as saying in the interview confirmed by his office. “We the central banks aren’t keeping rates low to permit hedge funds to take speculative positions in sovereign CDSs.”
