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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Due to their recent share decrease, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has agreed to sell majority interest to asset manager Neuberger Berman. The transaction will create a new, independent investment management company to be called Neuberger Investment Management, managing approximately $160 billion of assets as of 30 November 2008.
Lehman Brothers Private Equity Partners Limited (LBPE) and certain of its affiliates will be a part of this transaction. The sale is subject to final Bankruptcy Court approval, and closing is expected in the first quarter of 2009.
LBPE’s Board of Directors believes this transaction will significantly benefit the Company by providing the management team of the Investment Manager a strong platform from which to continue managing LBPE’s high quality private equity portfolio and support the long term success of the Company.
LBPE will also host a conference call later this week for investors and analysts to discuss the Investment Manager update and the Company’s performance. An updated investor presentation will be published on the Company’s Web site prior to the conference call on 12 December 2008.
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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.
CNNMoney.com - Dow Jones & Co. has suspended the publication of two hedge-fund benchmarks and the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Balanced Portfolio Index that incorporates them, saying that the underlying hedge funds have been deleveraging in an effort to reduce the risk to their investors.
Suspended are the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Equity Long/Short and Equity Market Neutral Strategy benchmarks. The 5-year-old benchmarks, and four others like them, measure individual hedge-fund strategies. Combined, the six make up the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Balanced Portfolio Index.
The request for the hedge funds to deleverage was made by Lyra Capital LLC. Lyra Capital is an investment manager and unit of Credit Agricole Structured Asset Management S.A. Lyra "provides the methodology programs used" in the Dow Jones Hedge Fund Strategy Benchmarks, the company’s Web site says.
Seeking Alpha - Investors pulled at least $43bn from U.S. hedge funds in September as market turmoil led to unprecedented withdrawals, an analysis by a leading research house shows.
The data from TrimTabs Investment Research – which was to be sent to clients late on Wednesday – come as hedge funds are working to prevent far bigger redemptions by the end of the year, when many funds give investors a chance to take out money.
Withdrawals can lead to a vicious circle in the markets, as funds sell holdings to return money to clients, depressing prices and prompting further redemptions.
The chief executive of a leading alternative investment manager said he expected the hedge fund industry to shrink by 50 per cent in coming months – with half the decline coming from withdrawals and half coming from investment losses.
Conrad Gunn, chief operating officer of TrimTabs, said the $43bn in September withdrawals would mark “the beginning of what we expect to be a series of outflows for the remainder of the year. We expect October outflows to be larger.”
The industry, which manages close to $2,000bn, has experienced outflows during only a handful of months previously, including a small outflow in April of this year.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Argo Group, an emerging markets investment manager, announced the launch of The Era Shopping Park Iasi. Projected to generate EUR 18 million ($25.7 million) in annual rental income the launch is funded by Argo’s private equity fund, the Argo Capital Partners Fund 1, together with a local joint venture partner, Omilos Group.
"From Argo’s perspective this has been an excellent investment," says Argo Capital Management chief investment officer Andreas Rialas. "Through our partnership with Omilos we acquired two excellent sites at a time when property and land prices were relatively low. Since then both projects are well advanced and demonstrating their potential to generate substantial returns."
The Park is the first of two planned retail parks to operate under the Era Shopping Park brand. The Iasi retail park will be the largest outside of Bucharest and the second largest in Romania.
Based in Romania’s second largest city, situated in the north-east of the country close to the Moldovan border. The Era Shopping Park Iasi will offer on completion more than 115,000 square metres of gross lettable area.
The second facility planned, the Era Shopping Park Oradea, is located in Oradea in the north-west of Romania, close to the Hungarian border. This smaller project with a gross lettable area of 65,000 square metres is expected to open in March next year. The Oradea site is projected to generate annual rental income of EUR 10.5 million.
"Economically, Romania continues to perform strongly. Following its EU accession, there has been a significant uplift in consumer spending and as demonstrated by tenant demand for Era, western European retailers are increasing their presence in the country," Rialas concluded.
The Argo Group has significant experience in property notably through the Argo Real Estate Opportunities Fund, a Guernsey-domiciled closed-ended investment company that invests in the commercial property markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The AIM-listed company is managed by Argo Capital Management Property, which has offices in London, Bucharest and Kiev.
The Argo Capital Partners Fund I was launched in August 2006 to focus on delivering private equity returns from different types of investments and situations in emerging markets. The fund, which was launched targeting a minimum internal rate of return of 40 per cent, has not yet exited any investments.
Its current portfolio includes Infarmasa, a generics pharmaceutical company in Peru, Nigerian commercial and retail bank Intercontinental Bank, Greek triple-play telecommunications Telecoms and Russian regional bank Probusinessbank as well as the Era Shopping Parks.
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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Hedge fund managers KP Securities and Sophia Capital Securities announced that they are joining forces, enhancing the 2 firms ability to raise capital for alternative investment managers. The transaction between the two firms was finalized on September 1, 2008.
The new combined company, Belvedere Global Investors LLC, is headquartered in Belvedere, California, a short distance from the San Francisco financial district. The company is a distribution boutique focused on alternative investments. It raises capital for investment manager clients that include hedge, private equity and venture capital funds and funds of funds, as well as for private companies seeking direct investments.
"This transaction will allow our team to continue deepening its geographic coverage of investing clients and fund managers, bringing under one roof a truly global collection of relationships", said Keith Pagan of KP Securities.
Over the past 4 years, the combined team, now run by Keith Pagan and Patrick Beaudan, the principals of Belvedere, has raised over $1.5 billion in capital for alternative investment managers in the U.S., Europe and Asia, working with investors in over 50 different countries.
"The combination of our firms enhances the depth of the professional assets we can deploy in supporting the capital raising efforts of an increasing range of clients in the alternative investment space, while preserving our focus on delivering top-notch investor relations services", said Patrick Beaudan.
As part of its activities, Belvedere also organizes private roundtables, where institutional investors meet select alternative investment managers over the course of a high-quality, one-day event that excludes vendors and the press.
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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net)- In a recent IRS Revenue Ruling addressing the tax treatment of management fees incurred in a “fund of funds” structure, the IRS’s has severely restricted UPTs (upper tier partnerships) from obtaining tax benefits from management fees.
In a typical fund of funds structure, an investment is made by a limited partner into an UTP which in turn invests in several lower teir partnerships (LTPs). Both groups pay an annual management fee to an investment manager based on assets under management. Since each LTP was, on the facts assumed by the IRS, engaged in the trading of securities, the management fee is an ordinary and necessary business expense and can still recieve tax benefits.
However, the UTP’s sole activity consisted of acquiring, holding, and disposing of interests in the LTPs while receiving a share of income, gain, loss, deduction and credit, therefore ruling these fees non-deductable in most cases.
In the ruling, the IRS examined prior cases of entitlement to deductions and these cases also viewed the partner, even a limited partner, as engaged in the trade or business of the partnership.
Editing by Alex Akesson Editor for HedgeCo LLC Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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Isle of Man Today- An Isle of Man hedge fund has won a prestigious industry award on the third occasion it was shortlisted.
Oceanic Hedge Fund was named Best Energy Hedge Fund on a Risk Adjusted Basis at the eighth annual Hedge Funds Review’s European Performance Awards in 2008.
The fund – which focuses on energy and shipping – was launched in August 2002 with less than US$ 5 million in net assets, but now has assets of $1.7 billion.
Its investment manager is Oceanic Investment Management, a subsidiary of Tufton Oceanic, based at St George’s Court in Douglas.