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.
Reuters China – Abu Dhabi Investment House, a Gulf Arab bank, is planning a $1.5 billion (824 million pounds) private equity fund to invest in real estate and manufacturing in China with a local partner, a senior executive said on Sunday.
An agreement to launch the fund will be signed within two months, said Rashad Janahi, ADIH’s managing director.
The Gulf firm is eyeing China at a time when a raft of tightening measures have chilled its real estate market, with sluggish transactions and falling prices in major cities. For a related story, double-click on.
Politico – On the same day Lawrence Summers was announced as President-elect Barack Obama’s top White House economics adviser, the veteran economist said he would resign as the part-time managing director of one of the nation’s largest and most successful hedge funds, D.E. Shaw & Co.
But even as Summers takes the lead of economic policy thinking for the Obama White House, which has promised to be one of the most open and transparent in history, neither the Obama transition team nor D.E. Shaw would say exactly what Summers had done in his two years of work for the $36 billion hedge fund, or how much he has been paid.
In a press release issued Monday, D.E. Shaw said only that Summers had been working on “various strategic initiatives, high-level research and advising the executive committee on the overall business.”
Wall Street Journal – In 2006, Lawrence Summers resigned as president of Harvard University and took a position as a part-time managing director with D.E. Shaw Group, a New York hedge fund with a reputation as one of the most secretive trading outfits in the world.
D.E. Shaw is known for using sophisticated computer-based quantitative strategies to make money on fleeting movements in the stock and bond markets. The fund has been a top performer, returning 15% to 20% a year over the long term, and in two decades has grown into a global powerhouse. But like many funds, it has taken hits in the credit crisis.
EPFR – Moneycontrol.com – Brad Durham, Managing Director of EPFR said there could be some acceleration in outflows from hedge funds. He added that India funds saw USD 24 million of inflows and that recently, outflows from some EMs (emerging markets) have tamed.
He said there has been slowdown in the pace of outflows from long-only funds and that selling momentum in some EM funds has slowed down.
Bloomberg – Hedge-fund managers including George Soros and Philip Falcone, in an unprecedented appearance before Congress, defended their practices and profits while splitting over whether the U.S. should impose stricter regulations.
"This is not a case where management takes huge bonuses or stock options while the company is failing,” said Falcone, one of five billionaire investors who testified today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in Washington.
Falcone, senior managing director of New York-based Harbinger Capital Partners, urged Congress to require more disclosure by hedge funds, which oversee $1.7 trillion of investments. Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC, cautioned against “ill-considered” rules because this industry is reeling from market losses and client defections.
Times of India – Can the wealthy trust their wealth managers any more after losing 30 to 60% of their wealth during the current global financial crisis?
The world’s top banks including brands like Morgan Stanley, UBS, Barclays and Standard Chartered operating in Asia are desperately struggling to find a suitable answer to this question.
It is interesting to see the usually suave and self-confident community of private bankers looking dazed and fearful of survival. There is already a run on deposits with some of Asia’s wealthy pulling out money from accounts of private banks. The future looks dismal. Some of the world’s top banks have either gone bust or merged with others to stave off closure.
"Professional advisers have failed to prove their worth," Peter Flavel, senior managing director of The Standard Chartered Private Bank told a conference of wealth managers in Singapore on Friday. "The players have changed in a way that was unimaginable a few months back. They will continue to change," he said.
Interactive Investor - Man Group aims to win more business from big Asian investors such as pension funds and insurers even as global financial turmoil spurs some existing clients to redeem holdings and seek safety in cash.
The world’s largest listed hedge fund group recently hired an institutional salesperson in South Korea because of the potential it saw there and was studying the long-term opportunity in China, said Tim Rainsford, managing director, Asia Pacific for Man Investments.
"It’s certainly a challenging time. At the same time, the brakes are not on in the business. We will launch products when they’re appropriate," he told the Reuters Finance Summit on Monday.
Reuters London – Hedge funds are starting to move back to the practice of marking complex structured credit instruments to their financial models because market prices are unreliable, says financial advisory firm Duff & Phelps.
James De Bono, managing director at Duff & Phelps, London, which helps hedge funds and banks value assets, told Reuters in an interview that funds are moving to marking to model because in illiquid markets the range of broker prices can be too wide to be very meaningful.
The valuation of hedge funds’ holdings has become an increasingly important issue as liquidity dries up for some assets markets while hedge funds themselves face redemption pressures.
Reuters – In the past month, traders could have shown up on Wall Street at 3 p.m. and not have missed much.
The last hour, even the last min utes, of trading seemed to be the only ones that mattered in October. But the days of one-hour markets may be waning, at least for now.
Traders say the intensity of these extreme late-day swings — 443 points on average in the "witching hour" for the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI in October — could let up as some of the so-called forced selling abates.
"I don’t think the late-day volatility will be as evident this month," said Dave Rovelli, managing director of U.S. equity trading at Canaccord Adams in New York.
TIANJIN, China (Reuters) – Abu Dhabi Investment House, a Gulf Arab bank, is planning a $1.5 billion (824 million pounds) private equity fund to invest in real estate and manufacturing in China with a local partner, a senior executive said on Sunday.
An agreement to launch the fund will be signed within two months, said Rashad Janahi, ADIH’s managing director.
The Gulf firm is eyeing China at a time when a raft of tightening measures have chilled its real estate market, with sluggish transactions and falling prices in major cities. For a related story, double-click on.
And China’s manufacturing sector, especially export-oriented and labour-intensive firms, are being hit hard by weakening demand from the United States as well as Europe.
Reuters – Turmoil in financial markets could halve the number of hedge funds by next year, and the survivors will likely charge less for their service, an industry executive said on Monday.
Ultra-wealthy investors, who fueled a doubling in hedge-fund industry assets to about $1.9 trillion in the last three years, are now increasingly fearful about hedge-fund failures and pulling their money out, fast.
"I think people are nervous," said Robert Elliott, senior managing director at Bessemer Trust, a New York asset manager that advises clients with at least $10 million in assets.
"They have seen noteworthy blowups and don’t understand them," he told the Reuters Wealth Summit. "Hedge funds could be the next hiccup and people could say this is another example of poor regulation."
Bloomberg – Salida Capital Corp., a Toronto-based hedge-fund manager with assets of about C$900 million ($834 million), halted redemptions on three of its funds after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Lehman acted as prime broker for Salida’s C$157 million Global Opportunity Fund, the C$85 million Global Prospector Fund and the C$64 million Global Arbitrage Fund, Managing Director Courtenay Wolfe said in an interview.
Salida is one of dozens of investment managers worldwide whose Lehman prime-brokerage accounts were frozen when the New York-based company filed for protection from creditors on Sept. 15. Large securities firms such as Lehman typically offer prime brokerage services to hedge funds and professional investors that borrow stock and cash to invest.
“The Lehman issue is something we are navigating through,” Wolfe said today in a telephone interview from Toronto. “We are working very hard to get the securities back for our firm and our investors because we believe they are rightfully and legally ours.”
