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.
Chicago Tribune – Citadel Investment Group is covering "a substantial portion" of its operating expenses this year, a break from passing those costs on to clients, Katie Spring, a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based hedge fund, said Thursday.
"We felt it was the right thing to do." Spring said, citing Citadel’s "long-standing relationship with our investors."
Citadel declined to specify how much of the costs it would absorb, but estimates range from $200 million to $300 million. When management fees were high relative to returns in 2005, Citadel founder Ken Griffin reimbursed investors. The hedge fund will again start charging its standard fees in January.
Citadel’s two largest funds have suffered losses of almost 50 percent through November. Assets under management total around $13 billion and clients have requested about $1 billion worth of redemptions. Hedge funds typically finance operations by taking 2 percent of assets, then retaining 20 percent of profits to pay employee performance bonuses. Citadel bills investors for expenses, which can represent as much as 8 percent of assets, and keeps 20 percent of profits. Among expenses charged to investors are annual bonuses to Citadel employees, according to people familiar with the hedge fund.
Chicago Tribune – The Citadel Investment Group will shutter its Tokyo offices and cut 37 jobs from its Asian operations.
The Chicago-based hedge fund will still have a presence in Hong Kong, where 25 positions will be cut, the company said Monday. The investment firm founded by billionaire Ken Griffin in 1990 will maintain 25 to 30 staffers in Hong Kong. A regional group that invested in companies undergoing mergers, asset sales or lawsuits will be cut.
Citadel’s decision comes after its two primary funds reported losses of 47 percent through November. The firm manages $16 billion in assets.
Chicago Tribune – The credit crunch and global economic recession have squeezed many independent filmmakers, who were already struggling from a glut of films and a shortage of funds even before the global economy went into a tailspin last month.
While the major studios have long-term deals in place to co-finance their movies, independent producers aren’t nearly as fortunate. Most of them do not have easy access to capital and instead must cobble together a patchwork of financing to make one film at a time. That patchwork has become frayed as lenders cool on making loans to filmmakers and foreign buyers grapple with access to credit and depressed currencies.
"The entire ability of independent filmmakers to finance their films has been shaken dramatically," said Mark Damon, chief executive of Foresight Unlimited, a Los Angeles film production company, who produced the 2003 drama "Monster."
Chicago Tribune – "The key change in the next decade is that policymakers around the world have chosen the winners and losers," Griffin said at a Wednesday panel. "The winners are the banking system."
By selecting commercial banks to become the centerpiece of the financial industry, the government closed the era of investment banks and hedge funds with highly leveraged balance sheets.
That should translate into safer and more conservative investing choices, but also less innovation by financiers and higher interest rates for borrowers, he predicted.
As roughly 8,000 hedge funds respond by reducing the size of their multitrillion-dollar balance sheets, their role in the system will inevitably be diminished, Griffin said.
Reuters – Final bids for the Chicago Cubs will likely be due late September or early October, two sources said on Thursday, as owner Tribune Co seeks to sell the storied baseball team by the year end.
The next stage in the drawn-out sale of the team, its landmark stadium and a cable TV network stake will be management presentations starting next week to give bidders more information on the assets, the sources said.
Those will likely take about two weeks, after which final bids will be sought.
Tribune, which owns the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times newspapers, put the Cubs assets on the block in April 2007 when it announced it would be bought by a group led by real estate magnate Sam Zell. It is selling the Cubs to cut debt it took on as a result of the leveraged buyout.
Zell said last month that of 10 groups that bid, five made it through the first round for the package of assets — the Cubs, Wrigley Field and an interest in SportsNet Chicago.
Chicago Tribune – The leader of an activist hedge fund with a significant stake in Sara Lee Corp. has been added to the foodmaker’s board of directors.
Downers Grove-based Sara Lee said Thursday that it is expanding its 10-member board by one, naming Jeffrey Ubben, founder and chief executive of ValueAct Capital, to the new spot. Last winter, San Francisco-based ValueAct bought a 5 percent stake in Sara Lee, maker of bread, hot dogs and meat products sold under such brands as Hillshire Farms and Jimmy Dean.
Activist investors often buy into what they perceive as undervalued companies and then urge significant changes. But ValueAct is considered less strident than some other activist funds, saying at the time of its purchase that it had no plans to push for strategic change at Sara Lee and was comfortable with the firm’s direction.
Neither Sara Lee, which is in the midst of a multiyear turnaround effort, nor ValueAct could be reached.
Chicago Tribune- Maybe plain-vanilla stock and bond mutual funds will do the job after all.
Long-short funds — the newfangled mutual funds designed to give common investors a hedge fund experience and protection during downturns — recently went through one of their first major tests. And they flopped.
In July and August, with investors concerned over subprime loans and a credit squeeze, the benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index went down 9.4 percent. Long-short mutual funds — which are designed to hedge risk by betting on some stocks to rise and others to fall — went down 8.4 percent, according to Lipper Inc., a mutual fund tracking firm.
