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.
Forbes – Financial assets have become so cheap because of the credit crisis that now is a good time to scoop up bargains, the head of one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, Avenue Capital, said on Wednesday.
‘Now is a phenomenal time to buy, assuming you think we’re not in a depression,’ Marc Lasry, chairman and CEO of the company, said at the 2008 Clinton Global Initiative meeting in Hong Kong.
‘We’re looking at valuations we think are extremely low. Unless the unthinkable happens, you’ll be fine,’ he said, referring to the investment environment.
A federal judge in Miami has found that former hedge fund manager Michael Lauer defrauded investors out of more than $500 million between 1999 and 2002.
U.S. District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra, in a 67-page order issued last week, found that Lauer manipulated the prices of seven securities that were a large part of the funds’ portfolios, but failed to provide any basis for the exorbitant valuations and lied to investors about the hedge funds actual holdings.
The judge said in his order that Lauer’s actions, as head of Lancer Management Group and Lancer Management Group II, were "egregious, pervasive, premeditated and resulted in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in investors’ funds."
Reuters Paris – European hedge funds have had a bad week due to the market turmoil from the bailout of AIG and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the co-founder of French fund of hedge fund manager ERAAM said on Thursday.
Paris-based ERAAM selects European hedge funds in which to invest its clients’ money and constantly monitors the performance of these hedge funds.
"This is a bad week. The driver of the market is not valuations any more. It’s just rumours and liquidity," said Cyril Julliard.
"Some could have been short on HBOS and long on Morgan Stanley," he added, referring to the British retail bank and U.S. investment bank.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – RAB Special Situations hedge fund is contemplating a share buyback, after getting burned by the nationalization of Northern Rock and the plummeting of share values that followed. The fund said it may repurchase the shares and either hold or cancel them.
"Our strategy has now lost money for three straight quarters ever since the credit crunch spread from the debt markets and began to hurt equity valuations," said RAB head Philip Richards.
While he did write off the Northern Rock loss as “very regrettable,” Richards went on to explain how he believes in a twenty year super-cycle for commodities. This would be driven by urbanization and industrialization in China, India and the Gulf region; areas that he says are experiencing supply shortages stemming from decades of under-investments in the mining and energy industries.
The $1.5 billion fund lost about 37% of its NAV this year. While it was the biggest holder of Northern Rock, other sour investments would have still forced the decline in Net Asset Value. The fund posted a loss of 28.9 million pounds, or 53.8 million dollars in the first six months of this year.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
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Reuters UK – Bombed-out valuations present an unprecedented buying opportunity in the European biotech sector, according to venture capital firm Index Ventures, which is eyeing both early and late-stage opportunities.
"It’s like being in a candy shop," partner Francesco De Rubertis told Reuters. "I’m very optimistic about the fact that a year from now, or a year and a half from now, the market will be very high."
He sees a major disconnect in current pricing for biotech assets, with Big Pharma companies regularly paying 50 to 100 percent takeover premiums for businesses that have been shunned by risk-averse investors.
Europe is a particularly fertile ground because of its relative immaturity.
Wealth Bulletin- Macro hedge funds that place bets based on views of the global economic outlook have shown returns of more than 12% this year, outperforming the S&P 500 index by about 17%, data from Hedge Fund Research revealed, according to a report in the Financial Times.
Macro hedge funds, which attempt to identify extreme valuations in stock markets, interest rates, foreign exchange rates and commodities, are the only categories of the investment vehicles to have racked up double-digit returns so far this year.
The performance is in sharp contrast to most other types of hedge funds. Merger arbitrage managers, who bet on the price movements of companies in the run up to mergers, have posted returns of just 2.3% in the year to date.
