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.
Media Monitors Network – "The US Federal Reserve Bank, a private institution, is printing $1 trillion to buy toxic bonds to shore up the economy. Will this work? Perhaps temporarily but most economists predict a sharp decline in the value of the dollar within the next five years. With too many dollars in circulation and a massive debt, the dollar will fall in value vis-à-vis other currencies. The Chinese have already called for a new global reserve currency to replace the dollar as it did to the British pound after the Second World War."
Bloomberg – Compensation for U.S. hedge-fund employees may drop as much as 25 percent this year as the firms try to recoup last year’s investment losses.
The decline will cut hedge-fund paychecks to about half the record levels of 2007, according to estimates by Alan Johnson, founder of Johnson Associates Inc., a New York-based compensation-consulting firm whose clients include financial- services companies.
About 70 percent of the industry’s 6,800 so-called single- manager funds lost money in 2008 with the average fund dropping 19 percent, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. That means most clients don’t have to pay performance fees — generally 20 percent of profits — until the losses are made up. Many owners of the private partnerships will cover salaries out of their own pockets, or from pools set aside in previous years, to keep their best employees, Johnson said.
The China Post – Asia-Pacific banks, brokerages, insurers and private equity firms are more optimistic about mergers and acquisitions as they seek to expand following a decline in asset prices, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
About 42 percent of financial institutions in the region expect to make an acquisition over the next year, compared with 38 percent a year earlier, according to a PwC survey of 215 senior executives conducted in Jan. and Feb. Still, 83 percent of the respondents expect the global credit crunch and economic slump to last for another one to two years.
Bloomberg – Cornell University is cutting its hedge-fund holdings by as much as 25 percent to save on fees after its endowment tumbled last year, Chief Investment Officer James Walsh said.
“We are de-emphasizing the hedge funds and more emphasizing the long-only managers,” said Walsh, who joined the Ithaca, New York, school in 2006. Cornell couldn’t justify hedge-fund fees, which typically equal 2 percent of assets and 20 percent of investment profits. Long-only managers buy stocks they expect to rise in price, while hedge funds also sell short, or bet on a decline.
Bloomberg – William Ackman’s hedge fund that invests solely in Target Corp. fell 33.3 percent in February, bringing the loss since inception to 93 percent, according to an e-mail sent to investors.
The decline in Pershing Square IV fund was more than three times that of Target shares in February. Ackman made his bet using options rather than the underlying stock, which can magnify gains or losses on an investment. Target tumbled about 9 percent last month.
Ackman last month told investors seeking redemptions that they would get their money back in March.
Reuters – Global assets of hedge funds may drop to $1.2 trillion by the end of the first quarter, down 35 percent from 2007 as the number of managers decline and funds rely less on strategies that use leverage, a UBS executive said on Tuesday.
"We are gonna see a reduction in hedge fund assets, we are gonna see decline in the number of hedge funds, we are gonna see some strategies that will not work in this environment," Timothy Bell, global head of hedge funds advisory at UBS Wealth Management, told reporters in Singapore.
Hedge funds had assets worth $1.9 trillion at the end of 2007, which peaked at $1.93 trillion in the middle of 2008, according to data from Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research. These assets dropped to $1.4 trillion at the end of 2008.
Bloomberg – An unexpected coffee rally sparked by dwindling supplies risks squeezing Starbucks Corp., Kraft Foods Inc. and hedge funds betting on a decline.
Demand may exceed output by 8 million 60-kilogram bags in the coming year — almost what Germany consumes — and exporter stockpiles are the lowest since 1965, the International Coffee Organization said. Arabica coffee futures may jump 25 percent this year after falling for the first time since 2001 as output drops in Brazil and Colombia, the Western Hemisphere’s top two growers, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Feb. 9.
“We see coffee prices increasing in 2009,” Sandra Bachofer, who helps manage $1.2 billion for Zug, Switzerland-based Tiberius Group, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “We expect coffee to be one of the most promising commodities in 2009.”
Business Times Malaysia – Hedge funds posted their biggest decline on record last year, losing US$350 billion globally, as the credit crisis crippled returns and forced investors to pull money out, an industry report showed.
About 90 per cent of the money was lost in the three months to the end of November, according to a preliminary report published on Monday by Singapore-based data provider Eurekahedge.
Funds that invested in North America declined the most, posting a drop of US$183 billion for the year, the report said.
The hedge-fund industry shrank by about a fifth to US$1.5 trillion at the end of the year from a peak of US$1.9 trillion, Eurekahedge said.
Reuters UK – Hedge funds suffered their worst full-year loss ever in 2008 but their decline was still less steep than the 38 percent drop for the average stock mutual fund, data released on Thursday showed.
The average hedge fund lost 19.2 percent last year according to data from New York-based consultants the Hennessee Group and 18.30 percent according to data from Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research HFR.L.
Funds of hedge funds, which promise to build a portfolio of individual hedge funds to spread the risk, fared the worst of all, losing 19.97 percent, HFR said, citing exposure to accused financial swindler Bernard Madoff as a major reason for the losses.
Bloomberg – William Ackman’s hedge fund that invests in Target Corp. fell 68 percent last year, more than double the loss by the second-largest U.S. discount chain.
Pershing Square IV declined 7.7 percent in December alone, according to a letter to investors from Pershing Square Capital Management LP. Ackman and Pershing spent about $2 billion in 2007 for a stake in Minneapolis-based Target. Ackman has since pressed Target to buy back shares, sell its credit-card unit and extract more value from its real estate.
Ackman, who controls 9.5 percent of Target, proposed last year that the company place the land under Target stores into a real estate investment trust that would lease the property back to the retailer. The New York-based investor has argued that such a move would free up cash for the company and result in a higher valuation.
Pershing Square IV’s loss last year followed a decline of 43 percent in 2007. The fund is structured so its returns to investors double the stock’s movement.
Bloomberg – The biggest-ever decline in commodities turned Pierre Andurand and Chris Levett into this year’s heroes for investors.
Andurand’s $1.1 billion BlueGold Capital Management LLP hedge fund in London almost tripled between its February debut and November by betting on higher oil prices in the first half of 2008 and then reversing the strategy, the 31-year-old manager said. Levett’s $3 billion London-based Clive Capital LLP returned 44 percent in the first 11 months of the year.
The first bear market in commodities since 2001, as measured by the UBS Bloomberg CMCI Index, cut investments in raw materials to $144 billion from a peak of $270 billion in the second quarter, Barclays Capital estimates. While the CMCI rose almost fivefold from 2001 to 2008, beating stocks and bonds, commodities measured by the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index fell 53 percent since June and are heading for the worst year in five decades.
Reuters – British fund manager GAM on Wednesday said it had moved to restrict investor redemptions to once a quarter rather than once a month in its funds of hedge funds amid turmoil in the industry.
A spokeswoman for GAM, which is owned by Swiss bank Julius Baer, confirmed the move after an earlier report in the Financial Times.
GAM which runs long-only and hedge funds has seen assets under management decline by about a third this year.
