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.
Bloomberg – The office of Kenneth Moelis in Los Angeles is a shrine to an investment banking career spent catering to the rich. Shelves and a table groan under the weight of dozens of Lucite deal tombstones featuring companies controlled by Carl Icahn, John Kluge, Donald Trump, Steve Wynn, Sam Zell and other business-section boldface names.
“My job is to be ready when the bat phone rings,” says Moelis, 51, perched on the edge of a leather chair. He’s referring to the hot line used in the 1960s-era Batman television series. Reinforcing the point, a framed architectural drawing of the fictional Wayne Manor that housed Batman’s wealthy alter ego, Bruce Wayne, leans against a table.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – A former Florida hedge fund manager is being held without bail in a West Palm Beach prison after prosecutors convinced the judge he is a flight risk.
Attorneys for Won-Sok Lee were seeking a continuance for his arraignment on Friday so that he could find a local lawyer.
Lee and his company, The KL Group, were accused of swindling over $200 million out of investors through their hedge funds back in 2006. He was arrested in February after trying to board a plane from Seoul to Argentina after spending three years on the run.
Lee and his brothers, who are currently serving lengthy prison terms, ran hedge funds out of locations in Florida and Nevada from 2000 to 2005.
Lee is facing dozens of charges, including conspiracy, money laundering, and mail and wire fraud. His next hearing is scheduled for April 17.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
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HorseRaceInsider.com – Richard Shapiro, former chairman of the Califorinia Horse Racing Board, has been "devastated" financially by the $50-billion Ponzi scheme that was engineered by Bernard Madoff, according to a letter that Shapiro wrote to a U.S. Congressman.
"Nearly all of my life’s work, savings and pension evaporated on December 11, leaving me in desperate financial straits," Shapiro said in the letter to Brad Sherman, a Democrat who represents the San Fernando Valley, an area where Shapiro lives. The letter was dated January 12.
In the letter, Shapiro asked Sherman to pursue Congressional relief that might help him and other victims of Madoff, who has confessed to defrauding dozens of clients from his company’s New York offices. One of Shapiro’s proposals is to allow Madoff victims to claim credit for back taxes that they paid on paper profits that didn’t really exist.
Miami Herald – Nearly two-thirds said they had lost 70 percent of their investments or more, according to the survey by the Shanghai Securities News, a newspaper affiliated with the stock exchange.
Many Asian hedge funds, meanwhile, took a drubbing and closed shop by the dozens, with their traditionally long bets on the markets’ moves souring amid the furious sell-off.
Whether 2008′s lows, reached mostly in October and November, hold in 2009 is a matter of debate.
The Business Sheet- After spending nine months trying to close a $450-million film financing deal to offset the cost of 30 upcoming movies, Paramount has been forced to give up the chase.
The studio was working with Deutsche Bank to try to arrange what would be its third slate film-financing arrangement, but after the bank was unable to syndicate the senior debt part of the funding, the deal has come to a screeching halt ,and Deutsche Bank has decided to shutter its pioneering film-financing operation, according to the Financial Times.
Over the past four years more than $13 billion has poured into Hollywood from once-rich hedge funds, private-equity firms and investment banks in the form of co-financing deals with practically every major Hollywood studio. In fact, both Deutsche Bank and Paramount were early participants in such deals, with Paramount completing the first of these slate deals with Merrill Lynch in 2004 and Deutsche Bank following soon thereafter with a $600 million deal between Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal and Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media.
