Newark Star-Ledger – Managers of New Jersey’s embattled pension fund, criticized by lawmakers for bailing out a struggling BlackRock hedge fund in October, secretly gave two other hedge funds the same deal, records from the state investment council show.

The Canyon Special Opportunities Fund and GoldenTree Credit Opportunities Fund were each awarded $49.5 million in state funds on the same day the controversial $49.5 million bailout of a BlackRock Inc. fund took place, according to a memo released by the investment council this week.

The cash infusions were a shade below the $50 million threshold that triggers public scrutiny. The BlackRock deal riled prominent Statehouse lawmakers. So does the new revelation that there was not just one such deal, but three.

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Newark Star-Ledger – Prompted by criticism from a prominent state lawmaker, the head of the state’s Division of Investment yesterday defended his decision to invest $144 million in pension funds in a BlackRock Inc.-managed hedge fund in the past two weeks, saying the state needed to act quickly to protect its stake and possibly reap big returns.

Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) questioned the transparency of the process, taking issue with the state putting $49.5 million in the hedge fund on Oct. 17 — an amount just shy of the $50 million threshold that requires a review by the state Investment Council. On Friday, the state invested another $94 million in pension funds in the BlackRock venture, following a special meeting of the Investment Council.

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Tags: chapel-hill, citigroup, dsp-merrill-lynch, ivey, portfolio-managers, reshuffle, sers, upfront

Guardian.co.uk – Housebuilder Taylor Wimpey has slipped more than 8% on news that Toscafund, the hedge fund run by former bank analyst Martin Hughes, has sold a chunk of shares in the business.

Tosca, which is said to have lost about £300m in the collapse of US bank Washington Mutual, held a 10.2% stake in Taylor Wimpey. But in an official filing just out, Tosca has now reduced that to below the 3% disclosable threshold.

Taylor Wimpey is down 1.75p at 19p, but rival Redrow, where Tosca had a 27% stake, has climbed 6.75p to 163p. On Friday, Redrow said Bridgemere Securities had bought 14.4m shares to take its stake to 16.24%. Traders wondered whether some of these shares might have come from Tosca.

Bridgemere is a fund set up by the Redrow founder, Stephen Morgan, and the purchase has prompted talk of a possible takeover of Redrow.

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