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Reuters – Even hedge-fund managers with portfolio gains are in trouble this year.
Dozens of managers who are outperforming the market and their troubled rivals with gains of as little as a few percent or as much as nearly 100 percent are facing a surge of withdrawals as investors try to exit during the worst bear market since the Great Depression.
Connective Capital, a Palo Alto, California-based hedge fund, treated investors in its short strategy to an eye-popping 85 percent gain this year as its benchmark Nasdaq Index slumped 42 percent. Still, clients asked manager Robert Romero to return roughly 20 percent of their capital.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Top financial industry leaders and more than 200 attendees gathered in New York late last week discuss the volatile hedge fund market and provide insights on distressed funds.
Sponsored by global offshore law firm Walkers, the "Fighting the Tape" seminar included a wide variety of speakers offered a comprehensive look at the changes in the market over the past year, as well as predictions for what the alternative investment funds industry can expect in the months ahead.
The experts anticipate a new era of hedge fund regulation, greater flexibility and versatility in hedge fund offering documents, broader discretion for fund managers, and continued growth in many of the world’s key economies such as China, India, Russia, Brazil, the Middle East, and South Korea.
Investment manager George Hall, founder and president of The Clinton Group gave his personal views on the financial crisis and what the market might see under President-elect Barack Obama. While he felt it was too early to say how the "Obama factor" might influence the hedge fund industry, Mr. Hall said that he hoped the new President would make good choices when selecting his Treasury Secretary and a leader for the SEC.
"The true impact of the US credit crisis will not be tangible for many months to come," Yolanda McCoy, head of the Investments and Securities Division at the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) said, although she was able to confirm that to date they were aware of a total of 340 Cayman funds that had been impacted by the problems with Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and AIG, with more than 200 of those affected by issues with Lehman.
Professor Jeffrey Rosensweig, director of the Global Perspectives Program at Goizueta Business School at Emory University, closed the seminar with insights into the investment opportunities presented by this current stage in the cycle, shifting the focus from New York and London to emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, China, the Middle East and India.
"The world adds 100 people every 42 seconds," Professor Rosensweig said, "and 98% of that population growth is in the emerging markets." Pointing to the expectation of long-term continued economic expansion in these regions, Professor Rosensweig said this massive population growth, combined with a move out of poverty in these regions, presents real future opportunities for investors.
Seekingalpha.com This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series.
Next up, we have Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global. Andreas Halvorsen is one of the many ‘Tiger Cub’ fund managers we cover here on the blog. ‘Tiger Cubs’ are the progeny of legendary investor and hedge fund manager Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. Many of the critical members of Tiger started their own funds, and Halvorsen is no different. We’ve already covered a few other ‘Tiger Cub’ portfolios in our hedge fund tracking series, including Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, and John Griffin’s Blue Ridge Capital.
Although both Andreas Halvorsen of Viking Global and Stephen Mandel Jr. of Lone Pine Capital both learned the tricks of the trade under Robertson in their time at Tiger Management, both have taken what they’ve learned and added their own spice to the value oriented, yet growth at a reasonable price (G.A.R.P.) tolerable investment style. Halvorsen attended Williams College and received his MBA from Stanford, while his work history includes stays at Morgan Stanley and Tiger.
Times Online – Hedge fund managers are spivs and speculators, directly responsible for creating carnage in the world’s financial markets and threatening the future of high street banks. At least, that’s what some argue.
But it is, emphatically, not true, according to Christopher Fawcett, the hedge fund executive who has taken on the role of de facto cheerleader for Britain’s embattled alternative investment industry.
Such criticism is misplaced, he argues. Investment banks, rather than hedge funds, were behind the surge in gearing, or leverage, that pushed markets to breaking point in the middle of last year. Hedge funds were actually more conservative and only moderately geared.
Seeking Alpha – This is the Third Quarter 2008 edition of our ongoing hedge fund tracking series. We’ve already covered Whitney Tilson’s T2 Partners, Peter Thiel’s Clarium Capital, Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square, and Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital. Next up, we have Maverick Capital. Lee Ainslie started Maverick Capital back in 1993 with $38 million. Nowadays, the fund is worth $10 billion. Ainslie, like many of the other fund managers we’ve profiled, has a background rooted in learning from legendary great Julian Robertson at Tiger Management.
These protégés (nicknamed ‘Tiger Cubs’) learned from the best and have had great success running their own funds. Some contacts over at Maverick have explained that its strategy is straight up stock picking, both long and short. The company made it clear though, that the company does not employ pairs trades, although, some of its long/short setups might be in the same sector.
Financial Times – Hedge fund managers who earned more than $1bn last year, including George Soros and Philip Falcone, are being summoned to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify under oath about the potential risks their firms pose to the broader economy.
The hearing before the House oversight committee, headed by Democrat Henry Waxman, marks one of the few instances in which the largely unregulated hedge fund industry will be subject to questions by lawmakers.
New York Post – Back-to-back bruising months in September and October have shaved more than 10 percent of hedge funds’ value, translating into hundreds of billions in losses, according to research and advisory firm Hedge Fund Research.
After weathering a brutal September that saw fund managers lose nearly 6 percent, hedge funds suffered further erosion last month, shedding 5.4 percent, according to HFR.
This year, hedge funds are down through Oct. 31 by about 15.5 percent.
Opalesque – For the US financial markets, as the credit crisis unfolded there was, along with the desire for immediate action, a sense that the government was taking temporary steps until the election would decide which administration would be the next to hold office.
As the November 4th election has determined the next US President to be Barack Obama, hedge fund managers gathering at the Walkers "Fighting the Tape" seminar on Thursday (November 6th) will include in their discussions on the outcome of the Presidential Election and the direction of the hedge funds industry.
"I do not look for a President-elect Obama to increase taxes on successful individuals as he has proposed. It is one thing to get elected, another to govern." Professor Jeffrey Rosensweig, Director of the Global Perspectives Program at Goizueta Business School of Emory University told Opalesque. A speaker at the "Fighting the Tape" seminar, Prof. Rosensweig will examine the global economy, market trends, changing demographics and global opportunities for investors and investment managers. "Given the backdrop of looming recession, he will realize this is no time to raise taxes on those who create jobs and/or put capital to productive use, and would face the disincentive of high marginal tax rates which he currently proposes."
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – The Central Bank of Bahrain will be participating in the Hedge Funds Review, Middle East Summit in Bahrain on November 11-12, 2008.
"As the funds industry continues to gather pace in the global arena, the CBB is determined to maintain its regulatory precedence in setting up the necessary initiatives to enable this development," said Abdul Rahman Al Baker, executive director, Financial Institutions Supervision, at the CBB who will be presenting an overview of the Hedge Funds Market and regulation in Bahrain on the first day of the event.
The two-day summit organised by Incisive Media will be addressed by Shaikh Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, Minister of Finance and Tarek Sakka, CEO of Ajeej Capital.
This will be the second time the event will be held in Bahrain. More than 250 major investors from across the region are likely to attend the summit, along side leading fund managers from Mena, Europe and the US discussing innovative alternative investment strategies.
The sessions will highlight opinions from expert investment managers, and views from academics on the global credit crisis.
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Reuters UK – Dozens of hedge funds have told investors they cannot get their money back right now as managers try to limit a wave of redemptions to safeguard all their clients’ investments — as well as their own futures.
Only a few months ago, hundreds of the world’s estimated 9,000 hedge fund managers made it tough for wealthy investors to put money into their funds by requiring high investment minimums of $1 million (617,500 pounds) or more and charging heavy fees.
Now managers are making it hard for investors to get out.
"Everyone is looking at their gate provisions (mechanisms that limit redemptions) and what rights they have to close their gates," said Timothy Mungovan, a partner who advises hedge funds at law firm Nixon Peabody LLP. "It is a phenomenon that has been occurring for some time and is picking up pace now."
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Citadel Investment Group announced yesterday it will shut down its $1 billion fund of hedge funds portfolio and use the capital to invest in other businesses.
The Fusion fund was launched a year and a half ago, with nearly 95 percent of the capital coming entirely from Citadel. The money will be used to invest in businesses that finance new asset managers. The remaining 5 percent of capital will be returned to investors.
"We have seen strong interest in the incubation and seeding strategies that we’ve developed," Katie Spring, spokeswoman for Citadel told Bloomberg News. "We believe these will be important components of expanding investment talent over the years to come.”
This move comes after months of swirling rumors that the $18 billion firm, headed by Kenneth Griffin, may not be able to weather this year’s credit crisis. Citadel’s largest fund, the $10 billion Kensington Global Strategies, has fallen 30 percent this year stemming from losses tied to convertible bonds.
Seeding has seen a spike in popularity in recent years. It involves focusing on new and emerging funds and fund managers in hopes of someday partaking in profit sharing once the fund experiences success. Seeding is something that new hedge funds generally seek out if start-up capital isn’t readily available, to help get their fund off the ground. New hedge funds may receive anywhere from half a million dollars to several hundred million dollars.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
The Australian – David Gray, UBS’s head of prime services in the Asia-Pacific, says: "In the next three months, people will make decisions about whether they want to continue their business that may prove uneconomic for them," Hong Kong-based Mr Gray said. "Fund managers are quite a hardy lot who don’t give up easily; they’ve gone through a couple of crises."
About 20 per cent of hedge funds in Asia, which underperformed rivals in the US and Europe, are profitable this year, according to Mr Gray. Their performance diverged from declines of 40 per cent to gains of 20 per cent, he said.
