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.
Telegraph.co.uk – The City is staring into the abyss. If the proposed EU directive on hedge funds goes through, London will go the way of Bruges, Venice and Amsterdam: a once dominant financial entrepôt sidelined by more virile cities.
This, of course, is precisely what some in the EU want. I have lost count of how often I’ve heard voices raised in Brussels against London’s “jungle capitalism”. In the eyes of many Continental politicians, the Square Mile is parasitical: a lawless free city, whose lax regulations caused the financial crisis. They deeply resent the fact that 80 per cent of managed equity and hedge funds are based in London.
Pottstown Mercury – I have seen the future of conservatism and … he is a hedge fund manager.
I refer to hedge fund manager Clifford S. Asness, and I’m only halfway kidding. Or maybe I’m not kidding at all. The fact is, Asness has launched the single most lucid and inspiring counter-attack against the Obama administration’s brazen assault on capitalism as seen in its Chrysler bankruptcy shakedown.
OpEdNews – So writes Philip Augar in an April 13 Financial Times (FT) op-ed. He’s a former UK investment banker/broker and author of The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, The Greed Merchants, and most recently Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City’s Golden Decade. More on his newest book below.
He quotes Nicolas Sarkozy, a questionable choice, at the G 20 summit saying "The all-powerful market that is always right is finished," then on departure adding "a page has been turned." For Augar, that depends on whether a "free-market" successor is constructed, something "entrenched interests in America and Britain would be well-advised to encourage if they wish to remain centre stage."
Bloomberg – It has been a year of record misery: the largest bankruptcy, bank failure and Ponzi scheme in U.S. history; $720 billion in writedowns and losses by financial institutions; $30.1 trillion in market valuation wiped out.
The biggest loss and the hardest thing to recover, though, may be something that can’t be precisely measured — confidence in the markets and the firms that rely on them.
“The wholesale funding model lost its credibility,” said David Hendler, senior analyst at New York-based CreditSights Inc. “That started the semi-nationalization of funding in the financial markets. It’s a real chink in the armor of capitalism as supposedly the best process for allocating capital. The government is now deciding who gets access to capital.”
