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.
Bloomberg – Artradis Fund Management Pte, RAB Capital Plc’s Northwest unit and Cannizaro (Hong Kong) Ltd. are cutting fees and locking up investors’ money for longer in new hedge funds that will buy bonds after prices fell in Asia.
Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prime brokerage unit has been approached by at least eight money managers about starting such funds in Asia to buy beaten-up fixed-income securities such as convertible bonds, said Eddie Guillemette, the firm’s regional co-head of global markets financing and services. Some of the hedge fund managers are offering to reduce management and performance-based fees by as much as 50 percent, he said.
CNN Money – In another sign the financial crisis is hitting Asia’s once booming hedge-fund industry, Alexis Fosler, the head of Citigroup Inc.’s ( C) prime brokerage team in Singapore has left the company, two people familiar with the situation said Tuesday.
Fosler was leading a three-person team that was set up more than a year ago to serve hedge funds clients in the island. She had previously worked in the offshore banking industry based in the British Virgin Islands.
One person said Citigroup remains committed to the Singapore prime broking business despite Fosler’s departure.
Reuters – Blackstone Group LP has cut the size of its planned Asia-focused hedge fund because the global financial crisis has led to redemptions, the Wall Street Journal said citing people familiar with the situation.
Blackstone, which manages private equity, real estate and hedge funds, would cut the fund size to about $200 million from a range of $500 million to $1 billion, the paper said.
New York-based Blackstone, about one-10th owned by China’s sovereign wealth fund, has scaled back its plans for the fund at a time when hedge funds around the world are facing redemption pressure, with some forced to shut down, the Journal said.
Reuters HK – Triple A Partners, an alternative fund firm specialising in seeding new managers, said on Tuesday it would invest an initial $20 million in a new hedge fund launched by Hong Kong’s Enhanced Investment Products Ltd.
Triple A, also known as Asia Alternative Asset Partners, said it had bought a minority equity interest in EIP as well and signed a deal to distribute their existing and future funds globally.
EIP, which has more than $200 million of assets under management, operates using a rare marriage of passive and alternative investing, creating market tracking index funds its EIP Overlay Fund can use to source stock for complex trades.
Bloomberg – BNP Paribas SA, France’s biggest bank, won prime brokerage business in Asia with hedge fund CQS (U.K.) LLP as it seeks to lure clients in the region from rivals.
The new contract with CQS, a London-based hedge fund manager that has an office in Hong Kong and oversees about $7.5 billion, adds to BNP Paribas’s existing relationships with major hedge funds in the region, according to Talbot Stark, global head of BNP Paribas hedge fund relationships. He declined to name other existing clients.
“We have prime brokerage relationships with three or four of the market leaders in Asia that are outperforming their peers and look to be longer-term survivors in the Asian hedge fund market,” Stark, 43, said in a telephone interview yesterday. “We’re in discussions with several other key players that are making decisions to change their prime brokerage providers and are seeking alternative providers that are established and committed to the region.”
Pittsburgh Tribune Review – On Oct. 5, philanthropist and hedge fund billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller sat in his New York den, watching the Steelers play in Jacksonville.
Two weeks before, he yanked an offer worth more than $800 million to buy the fabled Pittsburgh franchise, and now the quarterback of his beloved Black and Gold was scrambling to escape the clutches of the Jaguars, en route to a narrow 26-21 victory in Florida.
But during every commercial, Druckenmiller scrambled to a nearby room, where computer screens tracked the daytime tumult of Asia’s financial markets — Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 average crashing more than 11 percent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index tanking, the Bombay Sensex plummeting.
Times of India – Can the wealthy trust their wealth managers any more after losing 30 to 60% of their wealth during the current global financial crisis?
The world’s top banks including brands like Morgan Stanley, UBS, Barclays and Standard Chartered operating in Asia are desperately struggling to find a suitable answer to this question.
It is interesting to see the usually suave and self-confident community of private bankers looking dazed and fearful of survival. There is already a run on deposits with some of Asia’s wealthy pulling out money from accounts of private banks. The future looks dismal. Some of the world’s top banks have either gone bust or merged with others to stave off closure.
"Professional advisers have failed to prove their worth," Peter Flavel, senior managing director of The Standard Chartered Private Bank told a conference of wealth managers in Singapore on Friday. "The players have changed in a way that was unimaginable a few months back. They will continue to change," he said.
Daily Telegraph – Highbridge Capital Management, which is majority owned by JP Morgan Chase and has $25bn under management, is axing 10 per cent of its New York-based staff and plans cuts in Europe and Asia.
The volatility in global stock markets has savaged the performance of some of the world’s best-known hedge funds, raising fears of a collapse in the sector, which could cause a fresh crisis in the financial system.
Big names including Deephaven, Marshall Wace, Citadel Investment Corp, Lansdowne Partners, Third Point and Harbinger, have in recent weeks sustained losses of as much as 20 per cent in some funds.
Investors pulled at least $43bn (£25bn) from US hedge funds in September, according to TrimTabs Investment Research. This is nearly five per cent of the global sector’s estimated $2 trillion in total assets.
Bloomberg – Gold fell for the fourth straight session after the U.S. agreed to spend $250 billion to rescue ailing banks. Silver climbed.
Stocks in Europe and Asia rose for a second day after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced plans to buy stakes in financial firms to ease the lending crisis. Gold fell 1.9 percent yesterday as the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index soared 12 percent.
“The equity markets have come back, so you’ll see some of the capital that was flowing into gold just a week ago go to equities,” said Frank Lesh, a trader at FuturePath Trading LLC in Chicago.
Gold futures for December delivery dropped $3, or 0.4 percent, to $839.50 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price declined $64 in the previous three sessions.
Telegraph.co.uk – A move by US and European central banks, as well as by central banks in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea, to slash borrowing costs has failed to reassure investors.
"It’s impossible to predict the bottom, and technical analysis is meaningless as panic and fear overwhelm the markets," said Jang Huh, at Prudential Asset Management in Seoul.
Japan’s Nikkei stock index fell 10pc, the biggest loss since “Black Monday” in October 1987 and it third biggest loss ever. The index, which closed down 881.06 points at 8,276.43, has lost more than 24pc over the past week.
Prime Minister Taro Aso warned that the slump could have real effects on Asia’s largest economy. The share price fall “has reached a point where it affects the real economy and fund raising,” he told reporters.
All indications are that European markets will open sharply lower.
International Herald Tribune – Lehman Brothers said Monday that it would sell for $2.15 billion much of its money management business, including its prized Neuberger Berman asset management unit, to Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman.
The sale of the business, more than a month in the making, has been among the biggest outstanding issues for Lehman, which filed for bankruptcy protection two weeks ago. Barclays of Britain bought Lehman’s United States capital markets division. Nomura Holdings of Japan is buying many of Lehman’s assets in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Before Lehman collapsed, it had proposed selling off a major stake in its investment management division, which includes Neuberger, as an integral part of a self-help plan. Then, it expected to fetch bids that would have valued the unit as high as $7 billion.
Reuters – Hedge fund manager PMA has the capacity to manage as much as $4 billion without curtailing returns given current market opportunities in Asia, its chief executive said in an interview.
The Hong Kong-based firm, which now manages about $2.5 billion, has also seen significant inflows into its funds this year despite the downturn in Asian financial markets, PMA CEO Farhat Malik said.
"The way that the platform is structured at the moment, in terms of capacity, in terms of investment opportunities that we see in the marketplace, we can easily go from $2.5 billion to $4 billion, we feel without sacrificing performance," he told Reuters in an interview late on Tuesday.
"We’ve had significant inflows from institutional investors outside of Asia," he added.
