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.
Guardian Unlimited – Tumbling markets and redemption waves have been murder on hedge funds, but the turmoil will free up top-tier talent for a quiet but well-heeled corner of the market: family offices.
The world’s wealthiest, not content to hand their fortunes to brokers and banks, can afford to build their own money management businesses. These offices, which would never be considered by top fund managers during the go-go years, suddenly look attractive thanks to their stable capital and long-term investment horizon.
"You follow the money. Right now that is leading people to family offices," said Greg Coules, a former hedge fund manager who is building a family office recruiting practice at New York-based Hunter Advisors.
Reuters – Hedge fund manager Steven Persky plans to start betting on companies’ bad fortunes again.
Persky, who runs $1 billion hedge fund firm Dalton Investments, said on Wednesday he will re-launch his distressed debt strategy three years after liquidating two similar portfolios when the strong economy made such investing difficult.
Now that times have changed dramatically, Persky is among a handful of fund managers who expect to make money for their wealthy clients in the distressed area.
The Independent – Rents for plush offices in Mayfair and St James’s plunged almost 30 per cent last year, hammered by the declining fortunes of many of their hedge funds tenants.
The commercial property agency NB Real Estate has released new research that shows the rent in swanky west London offices tumbled from £120 per square foot at the end of 2007 to £85 at the end of last year, a consequence of a bad year for hedge funds. They have been vilified for short selling bank shares, have suffered mass redemptions and experienced their worst ever full-year losses.
Business Standard – Indian entrepreneur Lord Karan Bilimoria has put Cobra, the beer company he founded 18 years ago, up for sale for an estimated £200 million, a leading daily here claimed today.
The 46-year-old businessman had drafted in advisers from NM Rothschild to find a new investor in the business, famous for supplying its beer to most of the 10,000 curry houses in Britain, the Sunday Times claimed. The company, however, declined to comment on the potential sale. According to the report, the decision to sell comes just two months after Cobra raised £15 million of fresh capital.
New Zealand Herald – Eyebrows were raised this week when New York hedge- fund Elliott International nominated two Kiwi businessman – including recently appointed Infratil director Mark Tume – to join the Telecom board.
Telecom is on the fringes of the media world but National Party proposals for a huge broadband rollout will have an enormous impact on media and suggest Telecom will have a big role in media infrastructure.
And Elliott’s press release – linking the nomination of Tume and Mark Cross to Elliott’s calls for a wider structural break-up of Telecom – have added to questions about the way ahead for New Zealand’s biggest publicly listed company.
Should Tume win a place on the board he would bolster the bridge between two big infrastructure companies – Telecom and Infratil.
