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.
The China Post – Asia-Pacific banks, brokerages, insurers and private equity firms are more optimistic about mergers and acquisitions as they seek to expand following a decline in asset prices, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
About 42 percent of financial institutions in the region expect to make an acquisition over the next year, compared with 38 percent a year earlier, according to a PwC survey of 215 senior executives conducted in Jan. and Feb. Still, 83 percent of the respondents expect the global credit crunch and economic slump to last for another one to two years.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – The Blackstone Group is making changes to the single manager hedge funds businesses within its Marketable Alternative Asset Management (MAAM) segment.
Blackstone is consolidating its distressed securities fund onto a single operating platform and moving Blackstone Kailix Advisors, the investment manager of Blackstone’s long/short equities fund, which will be spun off to its management team led by Manish Mittal, who intends to form a new fund as an independent entity.
Commenting on the changes, Tony James, President and Chief Operating Officer of Blackstone, said, “We believe these measures will enable us to operate more profitably in the current environment. Although these funds have performed better than the S&P 500 and other global market averages, we expect that adverse fundraising conditions in the hedge fund industry will prevent these two initiatives from scaling up to a size where they are meaningful for our business on a stand alone basis.”
Blackstone will be an investor in the new fund and investors in the existing fund will be offered the option of investing in the new fund on a preferred basis as their interests in the existing fund are liquidated. Although the existing fund has outperformed global equities measures, its size does not make it a core strategic business for Blackstone and it is not anticipated that this will change in the near term. The fund has not imposed any gates or liquidity restrictions on investors.
“We continue to have a significant commitment to the hedge fund business," James continued, "The current market turmoil with its associated dislocation of asset prices presents us with a multitude of compelling opportunities to invest capital. It is during times like these that we need to be especially disciplined to focus both our people and our capital on the largest opportunities.”
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Reuters – Hedge funds should be wary of being pressured into cutting fees because of poor performance numbers during the financial crisis, a director at fund research company Lipper FMI said on Thursday.
Speaking at a briefing on trends for the fund management industry, director of fiduciary operations Ed Moisson said the industry was seeing much discussion around a potential overhaul of the standard ’2 and 20′ structure.
Hedge funds have traditionally charged a 2 percent management fee and a 20 percent performance fee on investments in their funds.
Asian Investor – Hedge fund manager CQS has hired Michael Schulz and Laura Hui from the prime broking department of Lehman in Hong Kong.
Schulz is taking the post of risk manager for Asia at CQS. In Lehman’s prime broking unit, he was senior vice-president for portfolio financing and risk management. Between 2000 and 2005, he was senior vice-president for risk management at Lehman in New York, where he was head of market risk for global equities, and in Tokyo, where he was responsible for market risk regionally. Sandwiched between his two spells at Lehman, he helped set up Hong Kong fund of hedge funds firm Alphatraxx.
Joining him is Hui, who will be working as a relationship manager within CQS’s marketing and investor relations team. Hui was previously a vice-president in prime brokerage sales at Lehman Brothers Asia, having joined Lehman Brothers Tokyo in 2005.
With its remarkable output of hedge fund and fund of funds success stories in the last five years, Lehman Asia is very much becoming a ‘billionaires factory’ for breeding alternatives talent. Schulz and Hui follow in a long and distinguished list of Lehman executives joining the fund management industry in Asia, which includes Steve Diggle, Charle Peza, Huy Hoang, Paul Cuthbert-Brown, Paul Sheehan and ‘Billionaire Tom’ Picard.
