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.
NASDAQ – Tribridge Investment Partners Ltd., a Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager, said Monday it will launch a new fund in August and hired John Liptak, former head of Bank of America Corp.’s Asia special situations group, to run it.
The new fund will have a pan-Asia focus and seek to identify mispriced or undervalued securities due to financial stress, some corporate event or other special situation. It will be biased toward large-cap companies in more developed markets in the region such as Hong Kong, Australia, Korea, Singapore, or Japan.
"I believe that the opportunities from the upcoming default cycle have not been seen since shortly after the Asian currency crisis back in 1997-1998," Liptak said in prepared remarks.
Bloomberg – Colonial First State, Australia’s biggest asset manager, may seek an alliance with a hedge fund to offer customers a strategy capable of profiting in rising or falling markets.
The manager of about A$130 billion ($103 billion) has A$4 billion of client money in five boutique funds. Sydney-based Colonial started the alliance business in 2002 to broaden the range of strategies offered and has tie-ups with firms such as the Al Gore-backed Generation Investment Management LLP.
“We don’t have anyone who specializes in absolute returns,” Graham Hand, Colonial’s general manager of funding and alliances, said in an interview in Sydney. “If we can get the right idea working, that would compliment what we’re doing. So we’re looking at a few possible deals in that space.”
Opalesque – The Australian Fund Monitor (AFM) released last week its “March Absolute Return and Hedge Fund Review” report which showed that the strong rebound in equity markets both in Australia and overseas saw equity-based hedge funds managed in the region post not only their best returns this year, but for the past three years.
AFM took the results of all funds – including non-equity strategies such as Global Macro and Commodities, and including funds of funds, and found that all had posted the best result in March since the start of the Global Financial Crisis in 2007.
With the ASX posting an impressive rebound in March of over 7%, which continued in April, equity-based hedge funds (with 85% of funds results reported) returned 3.18%. Over the past 12 months, equity-based hedge funds returned a negative 13.20%, against the ASX 200 which lost 33.11% and the S&P500 which fell 39.68%.
Hong Kong Standard – Hong Kong remains the largest hedge fund center in Asia, with managers in the city overseeing US$22 billion (HK$171.6 billion) in assets as of December 2008, the Alternative Investment Management Association Hong Kong said.
The city had 245 hedge fund managers by December, versus 150 in Singapore and 145 in Australia. There were 30 hedge fund startups in Hong Kong in 2008, raising the most assets for Asian hedge fund managers with US$1.6 billion, the London-based AIMA said yesterday, citng AsiaHedge data. Singapore came second with US$638
Bloomberg – Global Tactical Trust, a hedge fund run out of Australia by Boston-based Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co., is betting the recent rally in stocks will end, and is avoiding high-risk investments.
The hedge fund that invests based on global economic trends returned 13 percent last year, when the industry posted average declines of 19 percent, by wagering against equities and backing bonds. Managed by Jason Halliwell, the fund is long the U.S. dollar, yen, U.S. Treasuries and gold, expecting them to rise, while remaining neutral on equities.
Bloomberg – Bennelong Funds Management, an Australian fund manager with A$400 million ($271 million), will start a second hedge fund to ride through the financial crisis as it seeks to more than double funds under management.
Melbourne-based Bennelong wants to boost the assets it oversees to A$1 billion in the next three years, Jarrod Brown, chief executive officer, said yesterday in an interview in Sydney. Bennelong teamed up with Security Global Investors LLC to offer a long-short global equities fund in coming weeks to follow a long-only global fund the two began this month, he said.
SGI will manage the global funds under the Bennelong SGI name to gain access to Australia’s A$1.2 trillion dollar pool of managed funds after the $1.36 trillion hedge fund-industry shrank by more than 20 percent last year, and averaged losses of about 19 percent, the worst year on record.
Bloomberg – Australian hedge funds will attract a net inflow of cash in 2009 after record redemptions by overseas investors led to the closure of at least 10 funds in the fourth quarter, the local arm of the Alternative Investment Management Association said.
Funds that survived will see some of that money invested in March once December quarter redemptions are returned to investors, AIMA Australia Chairman Kim Ivey said in an interview.
“Getting through this period is the defining time for managers because new money in March and April may keep them afloat,” said Sydney-based Ivey, who is also managing director of private hedge fund Vertex Capital Management. “Those that came out of 2008 and showed that they could still add value are in a very good position in 2009.”
Seeking Alpha – The debate over short selling often pits traditional “long-only” managers against the upstart alternatives: hedge funds. But as this report in yesterday’s FT points out, the lines between “traditional” and “alternative” are blurring quickly. The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) has been an ardent defender of the hedge fund industry against what it sees as unfair criticisms in the media (see relatedposts).
But now associations of “traditional” investment managers have come to the defense of short-selling. In fact, according to the FT, the Investment Company Institute (ICI) in the US, the Investment Management Association of the UK (IMA), and Australia’s Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA) have each warned regulators against requiring short-sellers to publicly reveal their short positions.
TREND Information – Major Asia and Pacific markets traded higher Tuesday in the waning days of a dismal year, reported CNN.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei closed 1.3 percent higher during an abbreviated final trading day of 2008. Despite the positive session, the index closed with its worst-ever annual percentage fall, losing 42.1 percent.
Elsewhere across the region, the KOSPI in Seoul was up 2.3 percent in afternoon trading, while Australia’s All Ordinaries index was 1.3 percent higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng picked up 0.9 percent.
Bloomberg – The Australian and New Zealand dollars rose as Australian stocks advanced on anticipation interest-rate cuts worldwide will bolster global economic growth.
The currencies advanced against the yen as Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 Index gained for the fourth day, its longest winning streak since Aug. 12. Economists forecast the Reserve Bank of Australia will reduce its benchmark rate to 5.5 percent tomorrow after house prices fell in the third quarter and manufacturing contracted at a record pace in October.
“The Aussie dollar has been following equity markets quite closely on global risk sentiment,” said Jim Vrondas, manager of corporate business at online foreign-exchange dealer OzForex Ltd. in Sydney. “If other Asian equity markets rally we might see a bit of late Asian, early European buying of the Aussie.”
