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.
Forbes – Banks should not be allowed to own hedge funds or equity funds and their trading activity should be limited, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker said in an interview with Il Sole 24 Ore on Thursday.
‘A bank that generates the major part of its income from trading should not be allowed to have a banking license,’ Volcker, an economic adviser to the Obama administration, said.
Reuters – Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million (3.48 million pounds) by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, financial disclosure forms released by the White House showed on Friday.
Summers, a former U.S. Treasury secretary and Harvard University president, also was paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by a range of organizations and companies, including several troubled Wall Street financial firms, they showed.
Times Online – Alex Salmond is under renewed pressure over his links with Sir George Mathewson, the former HBOS chairman, after it emerged that Sir George’s investment group’s hedge fund is running businesses from the Cayman Islands.
John McFall, the Labour chairman of the Treasury Select Committee, questioned Mr Salmond’s continuing use of Sir George as his chief economic adviser yesterday following the revelation.
Mr McFall said: “I am highly surprised that someone who appears to be avoiding paying tax in this country is an adviser to Alex Salmond. It is not in Scotland’s interests and sends very mixed messages to both bankers and the Scottish public.”
Reuters – President Barack Obama has decided to launch a government task force for restructuring the struggling U.S. auto industry instead of naming a "car czar" with sweeping powers, a senior administration official said on Sunday.
Obama is appointing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as his "designee" for overseeing auto bailout loans and as co-head of the new high-level panel together with White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, the official said.
But Obama, who took office on January 20 and last week won congressional approval of a $787 billion economic stimulus program, has dropped the idea of having a single appointee empowered to handle the politically sensitive task of revamping America’s once-mighty auto sector.
"There is no ‘car czar,’" the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
