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 – Platypus Capital Management is liquidating its long-short Asian and Australian hedge funds, citing difficulties in a “post-Madoff world.”
The Sydney-based firm, with about $42 million in assets, will return funds to investors, saying it didn’t have a “viable size in the industry as it currently exists,” partners Chris Talbot, Derek Sicklen and Charles Magri wrote in a letter to investors obtained by Bloomberg. Sicklen confirmed the contents in a telephone interview today.
Bloomberg – Australian hedge funds returned an average 2.1 percent in March, beating the 1.3 percent profit of their global peers.
The Australian Fund Monitors Index, which tracks the performance of more than 200 hedge funds managed from within the country, rebounded from a 1.6 percent drop in February, according to a report by Australian Fund Monitors based on 42 percent of the funds reporting. The S&P/ASX 200 Index jumped 7.1 percent in March while the MSCI World Index advanced 7.2 percent.
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.”
Sydney Morning Herald – The hedge fund industry says it supports federal government plans to ban naked short selling and impose a disclosure regime for covered short selling.
The Australian arm of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) said the group had been in talks with regulators and the federal government about legislation to go to parliament on Thursday.
But while it supported the naked short selling ban, moves to create greater transparency of covered short selling activity on the Australian stock exchange did not go far enough.
Sydney Morning Herald – BNP Paribas SA, France’s biggest bank, agreed to take control of Fortis in Belgium and Luxembourg for 14.5 billion euros ($26 billion), completing a breakup of the lender after a government rescue failed.
BNP Paribas will pay 9 billion euros in stock and 5.5 billion euros in cash for 75% of Fortis Bank Belgium, all of the Belgian insurance operations and 67% of Fortis’s bank in Luxembourg, the Paris-based bank said in a e-mailed statement today. Fortis’s risky assets will be split off into a separate entity.
“It means excellent conditions for buying a network with a government guaranty,” said Emmanuel Soupre, a fund manager who helps oversee about $31 billion, including BNP Paribas shares, at Neuflize OBC Asset Management in Paris. “It’s like buying a home with all the works at the expenses of the old landlord.”
Sydney Morning Herald- The waste management business Transpacific has attempted to snuff out concerns about its ability to service its $2.6 billion of debts, arguing that the market has failed to recognise its "incredible cash flow" and the value of its landfill sites.
After spending six months appeasing investor concerns over the group’s debt exposure, the executive chairman, Terry Peabody, said landfill sites were "another great asset of the company that I don’t think very many people realise".
He told ABC TV’s Inside Business that Transpacific could realise up to $100 million from its 26 hectare Tullamarine tip in Melbourne, which has come to the end of its life.
Sydney Morning Herald- There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that those aggressive funds we all love to hate were responsible for the massive fall in Babcock & Brown’s share price yesterday – a fall so large it prompted a "review" by the company’s banks of its corporate debt facility.
There is also no doubt B&B provides a fertile environment for the hedge funds to operate. B&B and many of its satellite investment companies are vulnerable because they are over-geared, with flawed business models.
