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.
Financial Times – The top three executives at GLG Partners, until recently Europe’s biggest hedge fund, have cut their salaries to $1 (69p) as the global financial turmoil puts pressure on senior managers to waive their pay.
Noam Gottesmann and Pierre Lagrange, the "G" and "L" in GLG, and Manny Roman, co-chief executive with Mr Gottesmann, said in a regulatory filing that they had agreed to take $1 in salary from April to the end of the year. They receive no bonus, although all are big shareholders.
Seekingalpha.com - The Mad Hedge Fund Trader graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in Biochemistry and a minor in Mathematics in 1974. He moved to Tokyo, Japan to join Dai Nana Securities as a research analyst of Japanese companies, becoming fluent in Japanese.
In 1976 he was appointed the Tokyo correspondent for The Economist magazine and the Financial Times. For the next seven years he published thousands of articles about the economies, companies, and leaders of every country in Asia. He was one of the first American correspondents to cover China during the cultural revolution. He reported on the American attempt to climb Mount Everest and guerilla wars throughout Southeast Asia. The major figures he interviewed included China’s Premier Deng Xiaoping, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, the UK’s Margaret Thatcher, the PLO’s Yassir Arafat, and of course President Ronald Reagan.
Financial Times – Blackstonemarked down the value of billions of dollars worth of debt it bought at a discount from Deutsche Bank to zero, demonstrating that the group bet too early on a recovery.
Blackstone bought the debt in April and marked down the value by the end of the year. The private equity group disclosed the markdown in a conference call on Tuesday with investors, who have grown concerned about the impact the global recession is having on the portfolio companies of private equity firms.
Reuters – U.S. private equity firm TPG has expressed interest in providing debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing for Aleris International Inc, a company it bought in 2006, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters.
The private equity firm wasn’t able to participate in an original round of DIP financing because of technical reasons, but expressed interest in the secondary DIP, the source said.
Aleris, a maker of aluminium products, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.
The Financial Times reported earlier that TPG asked the judge in the Aleris bankruptcy case to allow it to join a group offering the DIP facility. The source that spoke to Reuters, however, said that TPG had not asked the court or judge to intercede.
Financial Times – Hedge funds cut their borrowing to almost nothing in the wake of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, according to research by the City watchdog.
Data compiled by the Financial Services Authority show that leverage fell to just 1.15 times hedge fund net assets in October, down from almost twice a year earlier.
The survey, the only authoritative data on the opaque industry, also found that hedge funds had their highest level of "dry powder", or ability to borrow, since the research started in 2005.
However, prime brokers, the bankers who service hedge funds, say borrowing has fallen even further since the survey was carried out, and many hedge funds now have more assets than debt, or less than one times leverage.
"People are still holding quite a lot of cash," said Daniel Caplan, co-head of European prime brokerage at Deutsche Bank. "They are certainly not using the leverage that’s available to them."
The FSA carries out its survey of hedge fund exposure twice a year, and found leverage – measured as the proportion of total long positions to net assets, ignoring short positions – dropped from 1.44 times in April to 1.15 times in October.
Financial Times – New Star has closed two of its hedge funds after withdrawals of the crisis-hit fund manager’s internal capital left them too small to survive.
The manager has shut its three-year-old Firefly fund after Harry Tyser, its manager, quit in December, as well as the six-year-old Apollo fund.
New Star was seized by its banks in December in a debt-for-equity swap and has agreed a sale to larger rival Henderson in a stunning fall from grace for the previously high-flying group.
The closures come as hundreds of hedge funds are expected to shut this year, according to analysts and investors. Many small funds are being closed as their growth prospects recede, while larger funds are shrinking – and some are closing – as they face sizeable withdrawals by their clients.
Financial Times – The US Federal Reserve will launch its financing programme, worth up to $1,000bn, for consumer and business loans in the coming days, amid concerns that hedge funds might find it difficult to take advantage of the scheme.
The programme – the term asset-backed securities loan facility (Talf) – is the cornerstone of the US authorities’ push to jump-start the credit market. Officials at the central bank say it will be up and running by the end of this month.
Fed and Treasury officials say this is an essential complement to efforts to repair the banking system. The idea is to boost the supply of new credit-card loans, student loans and car loans by providing low-cost finance to investors who buy these loans bundled up as securities in the secondary market.
But the Talf relies on private-sector investors being willing and able to take advantage of the financing the Fed makes available.
Consultations have revealed potential obstacles to participation. The most significant of these are limits on the ability of investors who use Talf finance to buy an asset to transfer the loan when they sell it.
An asset sold with low-cost three-year financing attached would command a higher price than an asset that had to be financed in distressed private markets at the point of sale.
Moreover, most hedge funds do not have permanent capital so they have to consider the risk that redemptions could force them to sell the assets before the three years are up.
Financial Times – The trustee charged with tracking down money for victims of Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50bn Ponzi scheme will target big investors – such as hedge funds – that pulled "substantial amounts" of "false profits" out of the broker’s operation.
Under federal and New York law, investors who withdrew either principal or profits in the 90 days before Mr Madoff’s December 11 arrest are particularly vulnerable to so-called "clawbacks", but the trustee will be able to reach back up to six years in some cases.
With billions in claims and only about $940m in recovered assets, Irving Picard, the trustee, must rely on money from investors who cashed out early as a source of restitution.
He and David Sheehan, a lawyer working with him, told a creditor meeting last week that they intended to focus on large investors, particularly if they had suspicions about Mr Madoff’s operation.
Mr Sheehan cited the example of "someone who may have been well informed and may have had red flags".
Times of the Internet – Hedge funds have gained ammunition for complaints against German sports car maker Porsche after it said it made almost 400 million euros (514 million dollars) in bets on German blue-chip stocks, a press report said on Monday.
The Financial Times quoted Porsche chief financial officer Holger Haerter as saying that the company had gained 392 million euros in its 2007/2008 fiscal year from trading in options on German stocks, in addition to controversial gains from trades in VW shares.
"We have also arranged share options to generate liquidity. The underlying shares were referring to DAX (Frankfurt blue-chip index) companies and not to Volkswagen," the FT quoted Haerter as telling an annual general meeting.
Forbes – Commodity prices will remain low for a long time, possibly up to 7 years because of the global recession and falling demand, hedge fund Red Kite told a British newspaper.
Michael Farmer founder of Red Kite, a big player in the industrial metals markets, told the Financial Times the world economy has gone from boom to bust and that markets are going to be bust for a while.
Journalism.co.uk – Laura Stavro-Beauchamp has been appointed as a reporter for Financial Times service, dealReporter.
Previously employed as deputy news editor on weekly title Mortgage Strategy, Canadian-born Stavro-Beauchamp will put her global and financial background to good use by providing intelligence to hedge funds through market analysis.
Her advice to anyone hoping to follow in her footsteps is to embrace the early positions in your career.
Bloomberg – A hedge fund led by Frank Scheunert wants to oust Continental AG Chairman Hubertus von Gruenberg, Financial Times Deutschland reported, citing the investor.
Scheunert, who controls about 5 percent of the tiremaker’s stock, said Continental’s board is “destroying shareholder value,” according to the newspaper.
