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.
Forbes – CSX Corp. said a New York Federal Court has approved a settlement in which the railroad operator will be paid $11 million by two activist shareholder hedge funds over alleged securities law violations.
CSX said late Friday it will receive $10 million from TCI, which manages The Children’s Master Investment Fund, and $1 million from 3G Capital Management, less $550,000 in attorney’s fees and other expenses.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund Tremblant Capital reported that it now owns 1.1 million shares of Chipotle Mexican Grill, bringing its total shares in the Denver-based fast food restaurant to 5.7%.
"Chipotle shares have fallen recently, and the hedge fund obviously saw opportunity there," news resource SeekingAlpha says, "keep in mind that this hedge fund typically doesn’t take larger than 5% stakes in companies (which requires a 13G filing), so it definitely likes this name, as this is the first major filing from them in quite some time."
With $4.1 billion in assets under management, hedge fund Tremblant is based in New York and run by Bret Barakett, who is a former portfolio manager at Moore Capital Management.
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TheAdvocateOne year ago, former U.S. Rep. Richard Baker, R-Baton Rouge, stepped out of Congress to become the chief lobbyist for the trillion-dollar hedge fund industry and walked right into the economic tornado swirling through the nation.
“I don’t have too many irons in my fire,” Baker recently said. “I have too many fires in my irons.”
Now head of the Managed Funds Association in Washington, Baker’s one-year ban on lobbying former colleagues in Congress ended Monday.
He now expects to be going to Capitol Hill frequently to appear as a witness at congressional hearings. Neither Baker nor the association disclosed his salary, although some media report it to exceed $1 million a year.
Times Online – RAB Capital has agreed to sell Northwest, its loss-making Asia-focused investment business, back to its founding principals for only £1 million in the latest sign of retrenchment by the AIM-listed London hedge fund manager.
RAB, which originally paid more than £20 million for the business, said today that it would sell Northwest’s three funds to George Philips and David Rogers, who set up the business in 1998.
Mr Philips and Mr Rogers will take assets of about $300 million and a team of about 12 people with them. Northwest generated pre-tax profits of about £9 million in 2007 but is expected to be loss-making for last year.
MSN MoneyCentral – Mace Security International Inc. said Tuesday it has only received $1 million of a little more than $3.2 million owed it by a hedge fund managed by missing Florida money manager Arthur Nadel.
The Horsham, Pa., maker of personal defense and electronic security products said the Victory Fund Ltd. didn’t pay Mace the roughly $2.2 million it was due Jan. 15.
“We have already filed a report with the authorities, and we intend to take all possible legal action against the Victory Fund,” Dennis Raefield, Mace’s CEO and president, said in a statement. “Mace continues to have a solid balance sheet, cash in the bank and strong business fundamentals.”
Daily Monitor – Wall Street may be bruised and battered, but it still donated more money than any other U.S. industry to President-elect Barack Obama’s inaugural festivities on Tuesday, a study has found.
The Center for Responsive Politics said executives of finance, insurance and real estate companies and their family members gave $7.1 million to Obama’s inaugural committee.
Top donors from the world of high finance included George Soros, Ronald Perelman and David Shaw, the center said.
MSNBC – Nonprofits that are struggling because their donors lost money with Bernard Madoff are getting a bailout — but not from the government. Richer foundations are stepping in to help.
Human Rights Watch, The Center for Constitutional Rights and others are already slated to receive more than $1 million in help from philanthropies and donors who share their interests.
CNNMoney.com – On a gloomy morning in early August, more than a month before Wall Street and the world’s financial system seized up, a senior aide to Iceland’s Prime Minister paid a visit to the Russian embassy in Reykjavík to make a controversial request: Bail us out.
Iceland had one of the richest economies in Europe, but it had a problem. Its three main private sector banks had become so large that their assets amounted to more than ten times the gross domestic product of the country – and there were signs that they might run into trouble.
Iceland had asked its traditional allies for help, but to its consternation, its pleas to the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, and the European Central Bank went unheeded. Instead, the answer was always, "Ask the International Monetary Fund" – a drastic step Iceland didn’t want to take.
Globe and Mail – People often think that the price of crude oil is the only factor affecting the retail price of finished petroleum products, but this is not true, said Cathy Hay, an analyst at Calgary gasoline consultancy MJ Ervin & Associates.
Other fundamentals also affect prices, and these can differ between gasoline and diesel, she said.
Currently, relatively high diesel prices are a result of an imbalance between supply and demand. Worldwide diesel supplies are extremely tight at the moment, particularly in Europe, where there has been a major shift away from gasoline-powered cars.
Seeking Alpha – I’m lucky to count among my friends Charlie Michaels, owner of hedge fund company Sierra Global and portfolio manager of the Sierra Europe Fund. Charlie is among the few hedge fund managers sitting on a gain so far this year.
According to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index managed by Hedge Fund Research, Inc. in Chicago, the average hedge fund dropped 5.4% last month and is down 15.5% so far this year. The industry has been losing for five months in a row, which is the longest down streak since the index began in 1990.
Charlie and his team at Sierra Global, meanwhile, gained 0.2% in September, 3.0% last month, and are up 8.6% so far this year. The only year the Sierra Europe Fund ended down was 2002, when it lost 12.3%. The FTSE 100 lost 25% that year and the DAX 42%, so even Sierra’s loss that year can be chalked up as a relative victory. All of which is to say that it’s worth paying attention to Charlie when it comes to stocks.
Reuters – Traditional long-only mutual funds are set to dominate shareholder registers again as the hedge fund industry shrinks and retail investors continue to stay away, according to Morgan Stanley.
Meanwhile, with institutions, including hedge funds, deleveraging aggressively, emerging markets equity issuance is set to fall to 10 percent of total volume in Europe, Middle East and Africa in 2009 from one quarter this year, the bank told the Reuters Global Finance Summit.
"Traditional classic long-only funds, which used to be the main part of shareholder registrar in the 1990s, will become more important," said Emmanuel Gueroult, head of EMEA equity capital markets.
"The hedge fund industry is deleveraging…Access to credit is difficult."
guardian.co.uk – Bolder hedge funds are looking to snap up convertible bonds at bargain prices, returning to an asset class that became a no-go area for them only a short while ago.
The convertible bond market has tumbled 44.5 percent since September, as hedge funds facing a wave of client redemptions paid back bank debt. Many said convertible arbitrage strategies were a thing of the past.
But yields are now reaching all-time highs and are starting to attract the first daring hedge funds back to the investment arena they traditionally dominated.
"You can buy a convertible right now on a 25 percent discount to the same bond issued by the same company," Emmanuel Roman of GLG Partners, one of Europe’s biggest hedge funds, told a recent conference.
"You get a 25 percent discount plus a call option. That doesn’t make any sense," he said.
