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.
Bloomberg – Penjing Asset Management, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund of funds manager overseeing about $520 million, said it may not get any performance fees until next year, and declining income will restrict staff bonuses.
The company, which ran the fourth-best-performing Asia- Pacific fund of hedge funds last year, plans to keep all its 22 staff as layoffs by rivals make it cheaper to retain talent, said Chief Investment Officer Ronnie Wu.
“Realistically, 2009 we are just trying to climb the high- water mark,” Wu, 40, said in an interview yesterday, referring to a fund’s peak net asset value. “If we’re lucky, maybe we will get some incentive fees in 2010. It will be tough. The senior guys will take a pay cut. But if we can keep everybody intact, I think the future will get better again.”
Dow Jones Deutschland – While hedge funds suffer from redemptions and closures amid volatile markets, some firms are taking advantage of falling valuations and market dislocations to launch new funds.
Mark Fuchs, chief executive of Singapore-based Fuchs Capital Partners, said in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires that he is launching a hedge fund focused on trading blue-chip, large-capitalized Southeast Asian stocks in the region in two months.
Fuchs, the former head of Credit Suisse Group’s (CS) Southeast Asia equities division, has teamed up with two other Southeast Asian veterans: Winston Loke, who was previously Credit Suisse’s Chief Operating Officer for Asia-Pacific ex-Japan, Australia equities and Mark Maroongroge, most recently a portfolio manager with London-based hedge fund HBK Capital Management. He declined to elaborate on the size of the fund, however, other than to say it will start off "modest" in size but would eventually be "significant."
Reuters – GSO Capital Partners LP, Blackstone Group’s $25 billion credit hedge fund, is closing its Asia investment desk after failing to find attractive investments in the region, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The four-member team, led by Asia-Pacific head Timothy Donahue, will be relocated to either London or New York, the sources said, adding that GSO’s Asia fund raising team would remain in place.
The sources, who did not want to be identified because the information was not public, said GSO was shutting its Asia desk because there were better debt and credit investment opportunities in the United States and Europe.
Globe and Mail – Goodwood Inc., a value-oriented manager, briefed investors Thursday on a dismal September. There’s a lot of these letters going out from hedge fund managers. Goodwood’s funds were down 16 per cent last month, bringing the year-to-date loss to 32 per cent. Year-to-date, the S&P/TSX benchmark is down 13 per cent.
Goodwood executives Peter Puccetti and Cam MacDonald used their September letter to unitholders to explain the madness of markets, and plead for patience and perspective. They certainly deserve a hearing. But investors who bought into hedge funds on the basis of absolute returns – making money in good markets and bad – are going to struggle with these pleas.
“We have seen many well-known investment management operations badly harmed as a result of their leverage exacerbating the effects of the ongoing credit crunch and deleveraging we are currently living through,” said Goodwood’s team.
