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 – New Castle Funds LLC’s efforts to survive the arrest of its co-founder in the Raj Rajaratnam insider-trading case were set back as a Swiss bank ended a partnership and Rajaratnam decided to liquidate his funds.
Union Bancaire Privée liquidated a fund that it hired New Castle to manage, the Geneva-based bank said yesterday in an e- mailed statement. The Luxembourg-registered Market Neutral U.S. Equity fund had assets of $36.1 million at Aug. 4, according to Bloomberg data.
Reuters – Capmark Financial Group Inc., the commercial real estate company created through a 2006 leveraged buyout of certain GMAC assets, is preparing to file for bankruptcy possibly by the end of next week, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation.
The company, which owns a bank that will continue to operate while it is in court, is in negotiations with lenders, bondholders and the Federal Deposit Insurance Company that will result in a filing by the end of October at the latest, the source said.
Bloomberg – K2 Asset Management Ltd., a listed Australian hedge-fund firm managing about $650 million in assets, is planning to start a global equities fund that seeks to profit as the worldwide stock market rally spreads to smaller companies.
The Melbourne-based firm aims to start the fund, its fourth equities-related offering, with A$5 million (A$4.5 million) to A$10 million by the end of the year, Chief Investment Officer Mark Newman said in an interview in Melbourne yesterday. The long-short fund will target annual returns of between 15 percent and 20 percent and aims to attract up to A$100 million by the end of its first year.
Reuters – Wealth management firms are counting on new business from the moderately rich as they play down the impact of a possible exodus of the ultra wealthy from tax-hungry Britain.
The likes of steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and Russian owner of Chelsea football club Roman Abramovich are coveted by firms, but the vast bulk of assets actually come from comfortably-off clients — the so-called mass-affluent — less able to relocate.
Reuters – Adaptec Inc, target of a proxy war led by Warren Lichtenstein’s Steel Partners, said on Tuesday the activist hedge fund wants to gut the data storage technology company, shed assets and create an acquisition vehicle fueled by Adaptec’s stash of cash.
More than three weeks after Lichtenstein began soliciting shareholder votes to remove Adaptec’s chief executive and shrink the board to seven seats from nine, Adaptec’s board responded by questioning Steel’s motives and calling attention to Lichtenstein’s own setbacks of the past year.
New York Times – Ahead of a scheduled trial next month, prosecutors have identified “direct evidence” that they say shows a former hedge fund manager, Ralph Cioffi, used his investment in a fund he controlled to obtain a $4.2 million line of credit for a Florida real estate project.
In a series of filings in Federal District Court in Brooklyn last week, prosecutors said Mr. Cioffi fraudulently pledged assets in the hedge fund he ran as collateral for a real estate loan from Busey Bank. Executives at Bear Stearns Asset Management, the division that housed the fund, told prosecutors they denied Mr. Cioffi’s request to pledge part of his assets for the loan because it could create a conflict of interest with other clients in the fund.
Reuters – The price of gold could rise as high as $1,600 an ounce as investors opt for assets with lasting value rather than volatile currencies, says one hedge fund manager who has increased his exposure to the precious metal.
“All the fundamentals are in place. If it breaks last year’s high it can go to $1,200 to $1,400 quite quickly,” Pedro de Noronha, managing partner of Noster Capital told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Bloomberg – Pinpoint Investment Advisor Ltd., a hedge fund manager of $560 million, returned as much as four times its Asian peers this year through July with profits from a rebound in Chinese stocks and debt securities.
The $70 million Pinpoint Opportunities Fund, which gained 85 percent in the period, invested about half its assets in convertible and high-yield bonds, including those of Chinese property developers, said Duanmu Yongshan, Pinpoint’s Hong Kong- based chief marketing officer. The $300 million Pinpoint China Fund returned nearly 51 percent in the period, he said.
Bloomberg – Pinpoint Investment Advisor Ltd., a hedge fund manager of $560 million, returned as much as four times its Asian peers this year through July with profits from a rebound in Chinese stocks and debt securities.
The $70 million Pinpoint Opportunities Fund, which gained 85 percent in the period, invested about half its assets in convertible and high-yield bonds, including those of Chinese property developers, said Duanmu Yongshan, Pinpoint’s Hong Kong- based chief marketing officer. The $300 million Pinpoint China Fund returned nearly 51 percent in the period, he said.
Cayman Compass – The average hedge fund recorded gains of 2.42 per cent in July data released by hedge fund data provider Hedge Fund Research shows. Hedge fund assets have increased on average by more than 12 per cent in the first seven months of this year. In July the increase was driven by higher equity market returns, Hedge Fund Research said.
July was the fifth month of consecutive gains for the industry, which lost a record 19 per cent overall in 2008. While the hedge fund industry currently experiences its best year since 1998, most fund manager have not yet recovered from last year’s losses and record redemptions in the final quarter of 2008.
Stuff – As the collectivisation of middle class capital accelerated, a multiplicity of managed fund choices emerged to confuse the investor. There are active funds, passive funds, index funds, hedge funds, specialist funds trading in commodities, shares, junk debt, securitised rubbish, mortgages, small cap shares, large cap shares, contrarian funds.
You name it, there is a manager out there for every conceivable flavour of investment approach and every conceivable investment asset. In addition you can buy ethical funds and green funds to tap into the social issues, which by the way underperform but we feel better somehow. (Ethical funds seem to outperform but this is more to do with the weight of money argument (see below) than the underlying performance of the assets).
Bloomberg – Dennis Gartman, an economist and the editor of the Gartman Letter, said he is creating his first hedge fund to speculate on assets including global equities and commodities.
The River Crescent Fund, created Aug. 17, seeks to raise $200 million over the first year, Gartman said today in an interview from Suffolk, Virginia. The fund already includes some “well-known hedge-fund managers,” he said, without identifying them. Gartman has managed guaranteed notes since 2007 and an exchange-traded fund since April in Canada.
