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.
CNBC – Another of the once giant hedge funds is all but closing its doors. Atticus Capital founder Timothy Barakett, 44 years of age, is shuttering his flagship fund and returning $3 billion in capital to his investors. The roughly $1 billion left, Barakett’s personal fortune, will be managed by him in a so-called “family office”. Atticus will keep its European fund (not managed by Barakett), with roughly $1.5 billion under management, open.
Barakett says the decision was a personal one, driven by his desire to spend more time with his family. I don’t doubt it. But, I can’t help wondering whether Barakett’s exit is also due to the fact that most of the $3 billion he’s returning to investors is below its high water mark.
Times Online – GLG Partners, the London-based hedge fund, is on the point of losing a star fund manager this weekend in a situation that mirrors the high-profile departure of another top manager, Greg Coffey, last year.
Robert Donald, who manages part of the $1.5 billion (£1.3 billion) European fund with Pierre Lagrange, is planning to leave GLG after six years to work with the legendary financier George Soros.
However, sources close to New York-listed GLG said the situation was still live. ”He has not formally resigned, though he has indicated his desire to leave,” one said.
Wall Street Journal Blogs – Wasim Rehman, the 28-year-old head of risk controls at the hedge fund manager Marshall Wace, has resigned from the partnership and plans to retire from the investment industry.
In a statement to the market this morning, Marshall Wace said Rehman would continue as a consultant to the company, initially full-time as chairman of the firm’s quantitative oversight committee, but then becoming part-time and “thereby fulfilling his desire to pursue other opportunities outside of the industry.”
Vindicator – A bankruptcy judge said Wednesday he may let Delphi pursue wider fraud claims against the Appaloosa Management hedge fund, which backed out of a deal to invest $2.55 billion in the auto supplier.
Appaloosa had led a group of investors to inject as much as $2.55 billion into Delphi in exchange for stock once it reorganized, but the investors withdrew from the deal in April. Delphi Corp. sued Appaloosa in May, accusing it of deliberately and secretly working to sabotage Delphi’s effort to satisfy a condition of their deal: that Delphi should raise $6.1 billion in exit financing to support its emergence from Chapter 11.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Appaloosa sought the right to improve its position in the lawsuit, but in doing so the hedge fund may have opened the door to wider charges.
Judge Robert Drain had ruled in July that Delphi could pursue a claim that Appaloosa had misrepresented its intentions. Delphi lawyers argued that Appaloosa manager David Tepper, a Goldman Sachs alum and well-known hedge fund manager, gave his verbal commitment to do the deal when he testified in December 2007. They described his testimony as a declaration that “a deal is a deal,” which to them meant that Appaloosa’s withdrawal constituted fraud.
Detroit Free Press- Delphi Corp. has hired a Detroit investment bank to find a buyer for its brake business, which has been for sale for more than two years.
The Troy supplier said Monday that it hired W.Y. Campbell & Co., owned by Comerica Bank, to sell the business, which employs 1,000 people, including 100 in Michigan.
Delphi already has sold portions of its brake business in Mexico and Saginaw. Delphi hired W.Y. Campbell to sell the rest of the business, which includes technical centers in Brighton, Dayton, Ohio, and Shanghai, as well as three factories in Mexico and China. The brake business is expected to generate $295 million in revenue this year.
Delphi, with total sales of $22.3 billion last year, is trying to sell its brake business at time when it has become tougher for companies to find buyers for unwanted units.
