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.
Philadelphia Inquirer – The University of Pennsylvania’s endowment fund lost a lot less than other big Ivy League schools during the grim financial year ended June 30.
That’s a switch for the better at the West Philadelphia campus of the city’s biggest private employer, which trailed its peers during the financial-asset inflation of the mid-2000s.
Penn had ranked last among the 25 largest university endowments in the year ended June 30, 2008, with a 6 percent decline, according to the yearly performance numbers posted by the National Association of College and University Business Administrators.
Bloomberg – Man Group Plc, the largest publicly traded hedge-fund manager, rose as much as 4.5 percent in London trading after redemptions by institutional investors slowed.
Pension plans, endowments and money managers pulled $1.8 billion on July 1, half the $3.6 billion of redemptions three months earlier, London-based Man Group said in a statement today. The stock was up 1.7 percent at 243.25 pence as of 9:05 a.m.
Reuters – Many hedge fund investors burned by last year’s market meltdown will likely demand a system of checks and balances in which outsiders keep a closer watch over assets, data released on Wednesday show.
Pension funds, endowments and wealthy investors that have long funneled money into loosely regulated hedge funds will want to see more data detailing how their investments are valued and priced, researchers at State Street Corp found.
Financial Standard – Pension funds around the world are expected to pump up their $547 billion hedge fund allocation by more than $60 billion before December as they look to balance assets and liabilities, new research shows.
Hedge fund managers are expected to heap an extra $63 billion into their coffers from pension funds and family offices.
But insurance companies, private banks, endowments and foundations are all likely to decrease their allocations to the sector, according to Barclays Capital.
The report, which surveyed 300 investors and 100 hedge fund managers representing $873 million of hedge fund assets, noted investors were ready to aggressively allocate their cash balances but will demand liquidity in the process.
BusinessWeek – For years pension funds, university endowments, and other big investors essentially wrote blank checks to hedge funds and private equity firms. They readily paid stiff fees and agreed to onerous restrictions. Investors had no choice if they wanted access to the money managers and outsize gains.
All that is changing. With returns dismal and cash scarce, investors are demanding—and winning—concessions on everything from cost to oversight. "The balance of power has shifted," says a private equity executive.
In recent months some of the biggest institutional investors, including the $175 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System, have gathered at closed-door meetings in New York and Toronto to talk about ways they might flex their newfound muscle. A number of public pensions, such as the $16 billion Utah Retirement System, have pushed firms publicly to ease terms.
Bloomberg – Yale University and Harvard University may have to cut investments in hedge funds and private equity because the risks of holding the hard-to-sell assets outweigh the returns, said Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co.
“The Yale and Harvard portfolios, which have succeeded enormously over the past 10 or 20 years in terms of the emphasis on illiquidity and private investments and risk-taking — you have to question that model,” Gross said yesterday at an industry conference in Chicago.
The two Ivy League schools had more than half of their endowments in hedge funds, private equity, real estate and hard assets such as commodities at June 30. Gross, who manages the $150 billion Pimco Total Return Fund, the world’s biggest bond mutual fund, recommended in March buying securities that provide stable income this year rather than more speculative and illiquid investments, as slowing economic growth and higher unemployment depress returns.
Reuters – Prominent hedge fund investor Mark Yusko on Monday warned endowments against putting the bulk of their money into stocks, arguing that these assets perform only when economies are growing.
For years most investors ranging from big institutions to average Americans saving for college and retirement have bet mostly on the U.S. stock market.
But in the wake of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, Yusko, who worked with two large college endowments before founding his own firm, Morgan Creek Capital, said investors need to change their thinking.
The Columbus Dispatch – The hedge-fund industry, battered and humbled by the market downturn, no longer is planning to fight an increased role for government in regulating and inspecting the secretive investment pools.
Opposition has melted away as the market decline and prominent frauds have shattered the confidence of the pension funds, university endowments, charities and wealthy individuals who invest in the exclusive investment pools.
CNBC – Hedge funds of funds, the middlemen that pension funds and endowments often use to create alternative portfolios, lost roughly one-third of their assets last year, according to new data released Tuesday.
The industry’s largest funds of funds, managing more than $1 billion, now jointly control $744 billion in assets, according to industry publication InvestHedge.
Hedge Funds Review – A majority of all assets under management (AUM) by hedge funds and funds of hedge funds globally are from institutional investors, according to the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA).
One third of the AUM comes from institutional investors now come from pension funds.
The AIMA research defines institutional investors as pension funds, university endowments, foundations and governmental authorities. The figures were produced by AIMA’s research department and are based on extensive consultation with the association’s members.
Reuters – Universities and schools put more money into alternative investments like hedge funds in fiscal 2008, researchers reported on Tuesday.
The Commonfund Institute, a group that polled 628 educational endowments on their investment tastes, found their appetite for alternatives increased slightly in fiscal 2008 after having fallen off modestly in fiscal 2007. The fiscal year runs through the end of June 2008.
Universities and schools put more money into alternative investments like hedge funds in fiscal 2008, researchers reported on Tuesday.
The Commonfund Institute, a group that polled 628 educational endowments on their investment tastes, found their appetite for alternatives increased slightly in fiscal 2008 after having fallen off modestly in fiscal 2007. The fiscal year runs through the end of June 2008.
"With public equity markets declining sharply," the researchers said, "the long-term trend for alternative asset strategies to capture a greater share of educational institutions’ investment portfolios continued in fiscal year 2008."
