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 – It is a truth universally acknowledged that a hedge-fund wife whose fortune takes a dive will be looking for a wealthier husband. Tatiana Boncompagni, after all, says it’s so in her frothy novel “Hedge Fund Wives.”
Her Upper East Side women need to keep up appearances. Gone may be the days of baby-shower goody bags “stuffed with diamond earrings and four-figure day spa gift certificates,” but how will they live without private planes and chartreuse Birkin bags?
Guide to this rarefied world is Marcy Emerson, a down-to- earth Midwesterner who moves to New York when her husband becomes a hedge-fund manager. She begins attending parties and benefits with the other wives. Some are welcoming; others make the North Pole seem warm.
NineMSN – The trustee overseeing the liquidation of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff’s assets sued another investment fund on Tuesday, claiming it owes Madoff’s victims more than $US1 billion ($A1.32 billion) it withdrew from his firm.
The complaint in Manhattan bankruptcy court alleges Harley International Ltd knew or should have known that the fortune came out of the pockets of victims of Madoff’s giant Ponzi scheme.
Of the $US1 billion ($A1.32 billion) total, the private, overseas hedge fund withdrew $US425 million ($A560.61 million) during the three months before his arrest last year.
Forbes – The investment office of the Guinness family, which made its fortune in brewing, has taken a stake in 47 Degrees North and will back future fund launches, the fund of hedge funds firm said on Monday.
Under the deal, Iveagh will be a minority shareholder in 47 Degrees North and provide seed capital for new launches, which are set to include emerging managers and innovative hedge fund strategies, the hedge fund firm said in a statement. It did not give the size of the stake.
FINalternatives – The richest hedge fund manager in the world, clocking in as the 29th richest person in the world, is George Soros, whose $11 billion fortune actually increased during the difficult 2008. Joining him among the top 100 are fellow hedge fund managers Carl Icahn (43rd place with $9 billion), James Simons of Renaissance Technologies (55th place with $8 billion), John Paulson (76th place with $6 billion) and Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors (87th place with $5.5 billion).
Bloomberg – Atlantis Investment Management Ltd., a London-based firm that oversees $1.8 billion, is seeking unitholders’ approval to liquidate the China Fortune Fund from which redemptions have been frozen since October.
China Fortune Fund unitholders may choose to exchange their shares of the liquid assets for units in a new fund or withdraw their money, Liu Yang, manager of the fund, said in a Bloomberg Television interview today. Liquid assets held by the Atlantis China Fortune Fund would be transferred to the proposed new vehicle called Atlantis New China Fortune Fund, according to a document sent to investors and obtained by Bloomberg News.
Bloomberg – Britain’s Prince Charles, among other royalty and wealthy Europeans, were targeted through Bernard Madoff’s use of high-profile recruiters, said whistleblower Harry Markopolos in documents given U.S. lawmakers.
Prince Michael of Yugoslavia was an executive of a so- called Madoff feeder fund, Access International Advisors Ltd., when he met Prince Charles and his sons at a polo field during a marketing tour in 2002, Markopolos said. Prince Charles put no money with Madoff, said a person familiar with the matter. Liliane Bettencourt, the world’s wealthiest woman, did lose money after she entrusted part of her $22.9 billion fortune to Access, two people familiar with the matter said.
Daily Mail – One of Britain’s most successful hedge funds made a fortune betting on a plunge in Barclays shares on the day the short-selling ban was lifted, it has emerged.
Lansdowne Partners sold shares in the high street banking giant last Friday when they plummeted by 25 per cent and then bought them back on Wednesday.
New York Daily News - Jacob Ezra Merkin was once revered as a wizard of Wall Street, an angel of charity and a lion of Judaic studies.
Now he has earned infamy as a destroyer of wealth, a menace to philanthropy, a pariah in some synagogues and a target of a probe by the state attorney general’s office.
A single unforgivable deed capsized his fortune, reputation and social standing overnight: He embraced a false prophet of profit named Bernard Madoff.
Tehran Times – "We do have to have much more government oversight and involvement than we’ve seen in the last decade or so,” said Waxman, a California Democrat.
“A lot of people didn’t either know what they were getting into or much care because they weren’t going to be the ones holding the bag,” Waxman said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s "Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing.
Hedge funds need regulation "to make sure the incentives are right for them and others to do the right thing,” said Waxman. "Certainly we need more transparency.”
His House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will take testimony next month from representatives of hedge funds and from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the biggest buyers of U.S. mortgages.
Vindicator – A bankruptcy judge said Wednesday he may let Delphi pursue wider fraud claims against the Appaloosa Management hedge fund, which backed out of a deal to invest $2.55 billion in the auto supplier.
Appaloosa had led a group of investors to inject as much as $2.55 billion into Delphi in exchange for stock once it reorganized, but the investors withdrew from the deal in April. Delphi Corp. sued Appaloosa in May, accusing it of deliberately and secretly working to sabotage Delphi’s effort to satisfy a condition of their deal: that Delphi should raise $6.1 billion in exit financing to support its emergence from Chapter 11.
On Wednesday, lawyers for Appaloosa sought the right to improve its position in the lawsuit, but in doing so the hedge fund may have opened the door to wider charges.
Judge Robert Drain had ruled in July that Delphi could pursue a claim that Appaloosa had misrepresented its intentions. Delphi lawyers argued that Appaloosa manager David Tepper, a Goldman Sachs alum and well-known hedge fund manager, gave his verbal commitment to do the deal when he testified in December 2007. They described his testimony as a declaration that “a deal is a deal,” which to them meant that Appaloosa’s withdrawal constituted fraud.
