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.
Investment Week – Castlestone Management is set to launch a hybrid fund investing in both equities and hedge funds.
The group claims managed futures have maintained decent returns throughout the market turmoil and predict the asset class will work well in tandem with equities, which have yet to see a turnaround.
Managed futures use trading processes to access the global futures markets.
Castlestone is currently testing the market appetite for the Defensive Equity fund, with a view to launching the vehicle at the end of January.
Globe and Mail – This is how bad things are for hedge funds right now. On the CanadianHedgeWatch.com website, a hub for the hedge business, the lead article one recent day was headlined "The hedge fund collapse."
The article, which originally appeared on the Portfolio.com website, tells us that as many as half the 10,000 hedge funds that existed earlier this year could fail or be wound up in the next 12 months. Outsmarted by the financial crisis of 2008, some prominent hedge fund managers lost 20 to 65 per cent of their assets even before October came. "The hedge fund mystique died with the crash of 2008," the article says.
The mystique is dead for sure, but hedge funds are not. The Horizons Global Contrarian Fund proves it.
What we have in Horizons Global Contrarian is a hedge fund of the old school. Rather than acting as a supercharged equity fund willing to push all risk boundaries, it tries in a measured and conservative way to make money no matter what the stock markets are doing.
Dallas Morning News – Hedge fund operator and oil prognosticator T. Boone Pickens liquidated one of his hedge funds last month as the stock markets plunged.
The Dallas billionaire converted his energy equity fund to cash and offered investors the opportunity to withdraw their money early.
The fund started with $2 billion and could be down to around $400 million to $500 million after withdrawals, according to someone familiar with the fund.
The fund was down 60 percent this year after heady gains in previous years.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Alternative investor Ansher Holding Limited, which is focused on investments in Central Asia and the Caucasus, has reported their equity long/short hedge fund is up 13% YTD.
“Central Asia and the Caucasus region have emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing regions and has shown notable development potential,” says Pascal Buschor, Executive Director and member of the investment committee, “The region is rich in oil, gas, cotton and gold with reasonable infrastructure and human capital and a strategic location between Asia and Europe. The diversified economies of most Central Asian countries show also very attractive valuations in the banking, insurance, food processing and telecommunication sectors.”
Anshers 2 hedge funds have a rather narrow regional focus to invest across Central Asian and the Caucasus’ equity and property markets, the Ansher Regional Property Fund (ARPF) and Ansher Regional Equity Fund (AREF). The funds have shown strong performance since launch, in 2006 showing a positive return of +34.2%, 2007: +33.1%, 2008: +13%, for the equity fund, and +8.6%, for the newly launched real estate fund.
With a low correlation to main markets and strong links in the area, including political, the investment objective of AREF is to take advantage of high yield and relatively undervalued assets in fast-growing industries such as oil & gas, mining, energy, financial institutions, and consumer goods sectors in order to achieve long term capital appreciation primarily through an actively managed portfolio of securities and assets in the Region.
Endowed with world class natural resources, the Region is experiencing strong economic growth and attracting billions of dollars in foreign investments, Ansher says in its monthly report, expecting also to benefit from great deal of spill over effect of oil & gas and mining industries on other sectors of the economy.
Ansher Fund Management is the asset management arm of Ansher Holding Limited. Founded 1998, the company has managed number of successful funds dedicated to emerging markets of the CIS as well as Turkey and Mongolia. Ansher FM has managed three different funds with consolidated AUM of $80 million with mandates of investing in the equity markets, property markets and private equity opportunities.
This exceptional performance is attributable to being the only regional focused family of funds with physical presence of the team in the region Tashkent (Uzbekistan), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Dubai (UAE), Zurich (Switzerland). The team of Ansher FM consists of 10 investment professionals as well as 4 back office employees to cover the region.
Domiciled in the Cayman Islands, Ansher has a 2% management fee, a 20% performance fee with a 8% hurdle rate and a minimum investment of $100.000.
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Telegraph.co.uk – The City-based European equity fund, which had $2.5bn under management at its peak, is now down over 63pc so far this year, leaving investors fearful it will be forced to close.
The “blow-up” is a mighty fall for the founders, Ivor Farman and Scott Pagel, who famously paid themselves £100m each over two years after producing stellar returns to their investors.
The pay deals placed the pair in the ranks of the UK’s 800 wealthiest people and among the 30 wealthiest hedge fund managers in the country.
Gradient made a net investment return for its investors of 56pc in 2005 and 47pc in 2006. In 2007 the founders paid themselves £109m, and £94m the year before that, according to accounts filed at Companies House.
Houston Chronicle – Boone Pickens, the billionaire founder of BP Capital LLC, said 15 percent of his hedge funds’ holders have asked for the option to withdraw their money after he lost more than $1 billion in energy trades this year.
Pickens, who manages funds linked to energy commodities and equities, said his equity fund has taken a "real hit" as oil company stocks and oil prices have plummeted.
"I feel like all my fingers are mashed in the door right now," Pickens, 80, said on CNBC today. "I’m trying to get someone to open the door for me."
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Pickens was having his worst performance in 10 years, with his funds losing about $1 billion.
"It’s more than that now," Pickens said.
Pickens said his funds require a 90-day notice to withdraw money, "so if we can recover in the fourth quarter," people might reconsider exiting.
Bloomberg – Hedge funds that profit from turbulence in the financial markets are beating stock, bond and commodity investments for the first time in five years.
Volatility hedge funds climbed 7.3 percent this year through August, according to the Newedge Volatility Trading Index. The average equity fund fell 8.38 percent, corporate fixed-income funds declined 4 percent, and energy and basic- materials stock funds dropped 6.36 percent in the same period, data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. show.
“Nobody knows the direction of the markets or economy at the moment, and we’re profiting from that uncertainty,” said Trevor Taylor, 35, co-chief investment officer at Miami-based Innovative Options Management LLC. The firm’s $90 million hedge fund rose 12.3 percent this year through August, after returning 25 percent in 2007.
Price swings that helped Taylor started with the collapse of subprime mortgages that have left the world’s biggest banks with $506 billion of writedowns and credit losses in the past year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 19 percent since October as credit dried up and the U.S. economy edged to the brink of recession.
FINalternatives- The $154.5 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund last month made commitments to a trio of hedge fund and private equity managers.
The CRF committed €150 million (US$233 million) to CVC European Equity Fund V and $50 million to Levine Leichtman Capital Partners IV, a $4 billion middle-market, woman-owned private equity shop.
The fund last month also made a $1 million commitment to Clarium Capital, a global macro hedge fund, through one of its funds of hedge funds, which was not disclosed for competitive reasons
Asian Investor – The Shaka Japan fund has been launched in New York by hedge fund manager Shaka Capital Management. It is a new start-up, launched in January of this year with partners’ capital, and has an estimated capacity of $1 billion.
Arif Imam is Shaka’s business manager and is a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, responsible for global distribution of Japanese equities.
The portfolio manager is Alexandre de Bethmann who formerly worked at Federated Global and TIAA-CREF.
Shaka’s trader is Douglas Butcher, who was also a managing director at Morgan Stanley where he handled client trading for Japanese equities.
Target return is 12-15% per year on a Sharpe Ratio of 1.2 to 1.5. It is a Japan-only long/short equity fund concentrating on the top 250 stocks in that market. The focus on large-cap stocks is in part because of the very liquid state of the short borrow that lends to running a truly efficient hedged fund.
