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BloggingStocks - Over the past few weeks you probably saw signs in retail stores touting "big sales" with discounts of 50% to 70& off. It seems that Wall Street has caught on to main street’s way of doing business - discounts, discounts, discounts!
The Renaissance Technologies LLC, a large hedge fund, has waived all of its management fees for 2009. Originally it charged a 1% fixed management fee, but with the new policy it will take a $30 million dollar haircut. However, the other larger Simon’s Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund will not cut its management fee in 2009. Other funds are using similar practices. The Citadel Investment Group LLC gave back about $300 million dollars in fees it collected in 2008.
Renaissance, like many other hedge funds, suffered losses in 2008 ranging from 12% to 16% but managed to beat the S & P losses by 4-6%.
Bloomberg - Looking for a new definition of a hedge fund? How about an organization that takes 20 percent of the profits on your money in the good times, then refuses to let you have it back when the weather turns rough?
We all know the hedge-fund industry had a terrible 2008. With a few honorable exceptions, its promises of being able to deliver steady, positive returns in either a rising or falling market turned out to be empty.
Yet, in many cases, the industry has taken a bad situation and made it worse. Many funds have placed limits on withdrawals that investors can make. In effect, people are locked into a falling asset.
That is a big mistake. In any investment business, the return of capital is far more important than the return on capital. By forcing investors to keep their money tied up during a bad year, the hedge funds are damaging their own reputation, and it may well never recover.
There are numerous examples of funds limiting withdrawals.
Citadel Investment Group LLC said last month it was stopping year-end withdrawals from its two biggest funds after investors sought to take out $1.2 billion, or 12 percent of assets.
Magnetar Capital LLC took similar action after its largest fund lost 30 percent of its value in the year through November.
Cerberus Capital Management LP last month limited redemptions from a hedge fund that lost 16 percent of its value.
Bloomberg - Magnetar Capital LLC, the $8 billion hedge-fund firm co-run by former Citadel Investment Group LLC trader Alec Litowitz, limited withdrawals from its biggest fund after it lost 30 percent this year through November, according to two people familiar with the fund.
The restrictions, known as gates, were triggered after clients sought to pull more than 15 percent of their money from the firm’s $4.8 billion multistrategy fund, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.
Hedge funds including D.E. Shaw & Co. LP and Farallon Capital Management LLC this month imposed gates so they wouldn’t be forced to raise cash by liquidating assets at distressed prices. Magnetar, based in Evanston, Illinois, told clients who asked for redemptions by Dec. 31 that they will get 10 percent of their requests in cash and 5 percent in shares of its two credit funds, the people said.
Bloomberg - Balyasny Asset Management LP recruited more than 30 money managers and analysts from competing hedge funds in the first eight months of the year, exceeding its total for all of 2007.
“We have been aggressively looking for talent, and in a year like this, there are a lot more candidates out there,” said Barry Colvin, vice chairman of the Chicago-based firm, which oversees $2.5 billion. Hires came from New York-based Satellite Asset Management LP and Magnetar Capital LLC in Chicago, which have both lost money this year.
While more than 200 hedge funds shut down this year, Balyasny, SAC Capital Advisors LLC and Citadel Investment Group LLC are taking advantage of the industry’s worst performance in a decade to go on a hiring spree. Hedge funds, diminished by a scarcity of credit and enfeebled stock markets, fell by an average 4.7 percent as of Aug. 28, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. in Chicago.