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.
Times Online – A group of banks that financed the £450 million leveraged buy-out (LBO) of car wash group IMO will take control of the struggling business leaving a rival group of hedge fund investors with nothing.
In a High Court decision that lawyers say will damage hedge funds’ interests in dozens of ailing private equity deals, a judge awarded 100 per cent of IMO’s equity to the banks, led by HBOS.
The hedge funds, which also lent money to back the 2006 buy-out, argued that they were entitled to some equity in the business, which is being restructured after defaulting on its debts in March.
Reuters – General Growth Properties Inc GGP.N, the second largest U.S. mall owner, on Thursday filed for bankruptcy protection on Thursday, making it one of the biggest real estate bankruptcies in U.S. history.
Ending months of speculation, the Chicago-based mall owner which listed total assets of $29.557 billion and total debts of $27.294 billion, sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors along with 158 of its more than 200 U.S. malls, while it seeks to restructure some of its debt.
Bloomberg – Hedge fund managers who run the largest 15 percent of portfolios in the European Union would have to report risks, debts and trading activities to regulators under a draft proposal to tighten oversight after the financial crisis.
The EU’s executive agency in Brussels is weighing plans to regulate “alternative investment fund managers” who oversee at least 250 million euros ($333 million). The measure also covers private-equity buyout firms.
The proposal answers calls from EU lawmakers for rules on all market actors, and from the Group of 20 nations for oversight of hedge funds large enough to put financial systems at risk. While the proposal, which may still be changed, excludes 85 percent of hedge fund managers, it would leave out 24 percent of their assets in the region, according to the commission.
BBC News – A kidney cancer patient who was refused a life-saving drug on the NHS has been given hope, after a mystery benefactor offered to pay for the treatment. After his plight was highlighted by a cancer campaign group, a US hedge fund manager has come forward to help.
Despite being told by doctors that Sutent could lengthen his life, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) has said the drug is not cost effective, so PCTs are not obliged to prescribe it on the NHS.
After hearing his story, an anonymous New York hedge fund manager contacted the British cancer campaign group, the Pamela Northcott fund, which told Mr Rosser of the offer.
BBC – It may be a case of shutting the stable door after the thundering herd has bolted, but law and order is being brought to the wild wild west of global financial markets.
G Brown will, for example, in the coming days put on his Wyatt Earp costume, and will ask the financial gunslingers to hand over their weapons.
A huge and totemic encapsulation of the imminent arrival in town of a new breed of marshals and sheriffs is buried away in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal.
BBC UK News – "They hunt as a pack and can bring down financial systems" says the Daily Mirror, describing the hedge fund managers widely blamed for bringing down HBOS.
The decision to halt short selling of bank shares – for which hedge funds are widely blamed – earns the prime minister praise from the Independent, which says, "It is almost as if Mr Brown were Chancellor again".
But the Sun likens the ban to ringing alarm bells as the Titanic sinks.
‘Secret deal’
The Financial Times reports that news of Lloyds TSB’s takeover of HBOS left a "mood of melancholic resignation" in Scotland, where HBOS employs 17,000 people.
But the Daily Express says some MPs suspect a "secret deal" may have been done to protect Scottish jobs at the expense of employees in England.
Ahead of the Glenrothes by-election the government does not want to "alienate" Scottish voters, says the Times.
BBC News- Hedge funds tend to be based well away from London’s financial hotspots such as the City and Canary Wharf, in districts such as Mayfair.
But his employer, Lionhart Investments, is based next door to the golf club in Wimbledon.
It is a relaxed environment on the edge of Wimbledon Common, where at least one mobile phone network has no signal at all, but do not let that fool you.
"I have a mobile phone that rings all the time – and on family holidays, it quite often becomes a source of contention," he says.
