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Reuters – Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s pay czar, said on Sunday he has broad and "binding" authority over executive compensation, including the ability to "claw back" money already paid, and he is weighing how and whether to use that power.
Feinberg told Reuters that Citigroup Inc included the contract of energy trader Andrew Hall in submissions due Friday by seven major companies still locked in the federal government’s TARP Program.
Feinberg said he hasn’t looked at Hall’s contract, which reports have said could pay him as much as $100 million this year.
New York Times Blogs – Selling a controlling stake in Phibro won’t cut it for Citigroup, Breakingviews writes.
Sure, it would probably quell some of the uproar around the flashpoint that put Citi’s full ownership of Phibro, a commodities trading unit, under public scrutiny: the $100 million bonus due to Phibro’s boss, Andrew J. Hall, this year. But the debate has since moved on to whether such a venture belongs in Citi’s portfolio of businesses at all. That is hard for the bank to justify.
New York Times – Despite the industry’s record losses in 2008, hedge funds generally aren’t lowering their fees without concessions from investors, such as longer lock-up periods and commitments of at least $100 million, money managers and consultants tell Bloomberg News.
While Larry Powell, deputy investment chief for the $16 billion Utah Retirement Systems, could crow at a June industry dinner in New York that more than half of Utah’s 40 hedge-fund managers agreed to changes in their fees, with four adopting his recommendations, top-performing managers haven’t adjusted yesteryear’s top-dollar fees, Bloomberg says.
Reuters UK – HSBC Halbis fund manager Jim Dunsford is favouring trades exploiting price discrepancies, rather than big bets on market movements, because he believes markets are still in unknown territory.
Dunsford manages the 100 million euro (85 million pound) Halbis Global Macro fund, which uses hedge fund-style techniques to try and make money in all environments.
"We prefer non-directional, relative value bets. We’re living in a very unusual environment and directional bets are risky," Dunsford told Reuters.
Bloomberg – Most of the gains in Brazil’s currency and interest-rate futures markets this year are over, said Beny Parnes, chief strategist at BBM Gestao de Recursos Ltda., manager of Brazil’s top-performing hedge fund.
BBM pared back leveraged bets that yields on rate futures will fall and the real will strengthen after its Bahia 1 Fundo Investimento Multimercado jumped 86 percent this year, said Parnes. Bahia 1 has outperformed all 683 Brazilian hedge funds that manage more than 100 million reais ($53 million) as the central bank slashed the benchmark rate five times and the real surged 22 percent against the dollar.
Bloomberg – Three traders from Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and RBS Greenwich Capital Markets started a government-bond hedge fund named for one of their favorite songs by the Who.
5:15 Capital Management LLC, named for the track “5:15” on the British rockers’ 1973 album “Quadrophenia,” will begin trading today with about $60 million, according to Morris Sachs, one of the founders, who said the fund will grow to $100 million. Joining him at the Greenwich, Connecticut-based fund are E.G. Fisher, 40, and Rob Wahl, 42.
“We’re all Who fans and love that tune,” Sachs, the fund’s chief risk officer, said in a telephone interview. “What are we going to do, try to find another name for the Greek god of money?”
Bloomberg – Commoditrade Inc. plans to introduce an energy hedge fund in the fourth quarter, complementing a fund that invests in industrial metals.
The new fund will use the relative-value strategy followed by the metals fund, Chief Executive Officer David Phipps said yesterday in a phone interview. He declined to comment on the performance of the metals fund, the AMCO Commodity Fund, which Georgetown, Grand Cayman-based Commoditrade bought in February.
Commoditrade and competitors are opening energy funds as oil futures listed in New York rebound from the worst slump ever. Galena Asset Management Ltd. started an energy hedge fund this month that it said may expand to more than $1 billion. Andrew Serotta, who worked for Vitol Group, aims to raise $100 million for an oil hedge fund called Logista Capital.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) -While previous research has confirmed the widely held belief that emerging funds tend to outperform older and larger funds, hedge fund performance in 2008 saw a partial reversal of that trend, according to PerTrac Financial Solutions in its third annual study that examines hedge fund returns, volatility and risk, based on age and size.
“Last year was a difficult one for hedge funds of all ages and sizes, but once again we saw younger funds outperforming older ones, confirming our findings from earlier studies,” said Meredith Jones, managing director at PerTrac. “However, when it comes to hedge fund performance as a function of fund size, we saw a reversal of the trend established from 1996 through 2007. During 2008, funds with the least assets actually performed the worst, while larger funds posted better returns.”
As in past studies, PerTrac conducted two different analyses: one based on a fund’s asset size, and the other based on a fund’s age. Monthly hedge fund returns were compiled from leading hedge fund databases and analyzed using the proprietary PerTrac Analytical Platform software. In each analysis, funds were re-categorized into one of three assets under management (AUM) size groups: up to $100 million; $100 million to $500 million; and over $500 million. The funds were also categorized into one of three age groups: up to 2 years; 2 to 4 years; and over 4 years. The mean fund return was calculated for each group in each month, creating three size-based monthly indexes and three age-based monthly indexes. Various risk and return statistics were calculated on the returns of each index to evaluate historical performance, and Monte Carlo simulations were run on each index to indicate probable ranges of future returns and drawdowns.
Small Hedge Funds Underperformed Larger Funds for the First Time Since Beginning of Study Data.
The study reveals that small funds averaged a loss of -17.03% in 2008, while medium-sized and large funds fared better, with average losses of -16.04% and -14.10% for the year, respectively. However, over the full history of the indexes, from 1996 through 2008, small funds performed best, with an annualized return of 13.05% versus 9.99% for medium-sized funds and 9.28% for large funds. Along with its stronger returns, the small fund index also showed greater volatility over the 13-year period with an annualized standard deviation of 6.96% versus just 5.92% and 6.05% for the medium-sized and large fund indexes, respectively.
“There are several possible reasons why small funds underperformed their larger peers for the first time ever in 2008. Due to losses across the board, hedge funds experienced heavy redemption requests last year. Larger funds generally have more cash on hand and greater access to lines of credit than small funds, better enabling them to handle redemption requests without compromising their portfolios’ performance,” noted Jones. “The recent market crash also appears to have prompted a ‘flight to quality’ among investors, with surveys indicating that hedge fund investors have become more interested in larger, more ‘institutional’ funds. So it’s likely that smaller funds had to deal with relatively greater redemptions than did their larger peers. We also noted a larger differential in the number of large managers reporting in both the prior and current studies, with a larger percentage of small managers participating in both updates. As a result, there is heavier survivor bias in the large fund group. Other possible reasons include infrastructure considerations, greater reliance on beleaguered prime brokers, and larger redemptions from poor performers pushing more managers into lower asset bands.”
“However, one year does not make a trend,” concluded Jones. “It will be interesting to see whether the small funds’ underperformance in 2008 proves to be a short-term exception to the rule or the start of an official trend.”
Young Funds Continued to Outperform Older Funds in 2008
An examination of the relationship between fund age and performance revealed no surprises for 2008. Hedge funds with the shortest track record continued their trend of superior performance last year as the young fund index lost -11.31% for the year compared to much larger losses of -19.46% and -17.85% by the mid-age and older fund indexes, respectively. Over the full history of the indexes from 1996 through 2008, young funds have generated an annualized return of 15.74% while mid-age and older funds have trailed with annualized returns of 11.48% and 10.12%, respectively. Young funds have also fared best from a risk perspective over the long term; the young fund index has produced an annualized standard deviation of just 6.47% over the 13-year period while the mid-age and older fund indexes have proved more volatile with annualized standard deviations of 7.11% and 6.72%, respectively.
The new study is the latest in a growing body of research produced by PerTrac Financial Solutions for the investment community. The company is devoted to advancing the study of hedge funds and other investments by publishing original research as well as providing free access to their PerTrac Analytical Platform software to academic professors, students, and selected researchers through the PerTrac Educational Use Program.
Editing by Alex Akesson
For HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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USA Today – A Spanish banking giant that channeled $3 billion of its clients’ funds to Bernard Madoff has agreed to repay more than $235 million it withdrew from the confessed Ponzi scheme architect in the months before the scam collapsed in December.
Pending federal bankruptcy court approval, the deal announced Tuesday by a hedge fund investment subsidiary of Banco Santander would boost the amount recovered to help repay Madoff’s victims past the $1.2 billion mark.
The settlement would return 85% of the total sought from Spain’s largest bank by Irving Picard, the court-appointed trustee seeking Madoff’s assets for redistribution to thousands of victimized investors worldwide. Picard has so far issued more than $100 million in repayment commitments, a fraction of the total losses.
GrowthBusiness.co.uk – Its proposals would, if enacted, put an additional burden on both funds and the companies in which they invest. They have been greeted with dismay in the City, but what would they mean for the industry?
The central notion is that fund managers should be subject to ‘harmonised’ governance standards across the EU, with robust systems put in place to manage risk, liquidity and conflicts of interest. The rules would apply to private equity funds with more than €100 million (£90 million) invested, though this threshold would be increased to €500 million for funds which do not use leverage and lock in their investors for a minimum of five years.
GlobeSt.com – Locally based direct private lender Silo Financial Corp. has formed an alliance with a New York City-based private equity fund to concentrate on non-performing loans, says Silo founder Jonathan Daniel. The fund has earmarked $100 million "for opportunistic real estate lending, acquiring non-performing loans, lending against nonperforming loans and potentially even doing some strategic preferred equity," Daniel tells GlobeSt.com.
The time is ripe for such a venture, in the view of Daniel and the founders of KPO Ventures, two former partners at multi-billion-dollar hedge funds. "Obviously, the current environment is very conducive for private lending, due to the fact that there’s no capital out there," says Daniel.
Times Online – The role of the City of London as one of the world’s preeminent financial centres came under attack for the second time in two weeks yesterday, this time from proposed EU rules for private equity and hedge funds.
The EU wants private equity firms with more than €500 million under management and hedge funds with more than €100 million of funds to file detailed financial information with the Financial Services Authority. Private equity firms will also need to file figures relating to debt, risk and cash.
If the European Parliament approves the proposed legislation, about 1,000 British companies – owned by private equity firms either headquartered or with an office in the EU and with more than €500 million under management – would be saddled with annual compliance costs estimated at about £30,000.
