Times Online – Every week at least one British hedge fund is considering winding up its funds as catastrophic investment performance puts the sector under unprecedented pressure, an industry expert said yesterday.

Andrew Shrimpton, the former head of hedge fund regulation at the Financial Services Authority who now runs Kinetic, a consultancy, said: “The credit crisis is definitely kicking in for the hedge fund industry now. We are being approached by hedge funds considering voluntary fund liquidations on a weekly basis.”

His remarks came as CQS, one of London’s best-known hedge funds, wrote to its investors to say that its flagship $4.25billion CQS Fund had fallen 9.42 per cent for the year to date. Michael Hintze, its chief executive and senior investment officer, told investors that senior management at CQS were meeting as often as three times a day to monitor the fund and take action over its exposures where necessary. The fund, which specialises in convertible arbitrage – or small price differentials between bonds and underlying equities – is down more than 11 per cent for the year.

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Reuters India- A Chinese fund manager has won a lunch with famed U.S. investor Warren Buffett after bidding $2.11 million for the opportunity in a charity auction, more than three times what the lunch fetched last year.

Zhao Danyang, who runs Hong Kong-based Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund, had the winning bid in the eBay Inc auction that ended late on Friday.

Proceeds of the lunch with the 77-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc benefit Glide, a nonprofit foundation in San Francisco that offers programs for the poor, hungry and homeless.

Mohnish Pabrai, an Irvine, California-based investor, paid $650,100 for the right to dine with Buffett last year.

Buffett began donating lunches in 2000 after his wife Susan introduced him to the Rev. Cecil Williams, who founded Glide and runs the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church. The auctions, including the current one, have grossed more than $4 million for the organization. Last year’s winning bidder paid $650,000 for lunch with Buffett.

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