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.
Reuters – Edward Bonham Carter, chief executive of Jupiter Asset Management, is to stop running his Undervalued Assets fund after threatening last year to hand over the role if performance did not improve.
New hire Patrick Harrington, who joined Jupiter last week, will take over management of the fund at the end of the month, Jupiter said in a note on Monday.
Bonham Carter, a well-known figure in the fund management industry, has beaten the market and rival funds since he began running the fund eight years ago, but in more recent years performance has flagged.
Over the past five years the 122 million-pound fund has fallen 12.2 percent, while the average peer fund is down 4.3 percent and the FTSE All-Share index has risen 2.4 percent.
Times Online - Some of Britain’s most powerful fund managers are setting aside billions of pounds to fund cash calls from sound companies hamstrung by a lack of bank lending.
Investment bankers say that they have been inundated with calls from Britain’s biggest institutional investors over the past few weeks offering billions of pounds to fund the right recapitalisation deals. The institutional investors, corporate brokers say, are insisting that they be shown deals before private equity funds that are also waiting to snap up bargains.
Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, owned by Lloyds Banking Group, and M&G, owned by Prudential, the insurer, are among big investors ready to take up equity or debt of UK plc, whose shares have slumped in the past year. The FTSE all-share index is down almost 30 per cent over the period.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Privately-owned investment management company, SVM Asset Management, is seeking approval from the Financial Services Authority for the launch of the long/short SVM UK Absolute Alpha Fund, which has a similar investment approach to their SVM Saltire fund, which returned +19.7% in 2008.
The fund, if approved, will have the flexibility to move from a net long to a net short position differentiating it from other absolute return funds, the company says. Managed by Colin McLean, returns will be driven by stock selection and the net position of the fund will be determined by whether the manager has more long or short stock ideas at the time.
"In 2008 just 31 of the stocks in the FTSE All Share ended the year higher, and 580 were down. It is therefore not surprising that few long only managers were able to profit," McLean says, "Without question this year will be challenging for the economy. However, at a company level there will be winners and losers and fundamental stock picking skills will be required to identify them."
The focus will be on generating positive returns over the long term rather than positive performance each month, as such SVM believes the appropriate time frame for investing in the new fund is at least three years.
Based in Edinburgh, SVM focuses principally on global fund of funds, UK and European equities.
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
Money Management – HSBC will soon provide local services to its global hedge fund and private equity clients as they chase “the superannuation dollar”.
HSBC plans to increase its footprint in the Australian market with the introduction of local alternative fund services.
The alternative fund services business will form part of HSBC Securities Services in Australia and will provide local fund accounting, investor servicing and financial reporting to a range of hedge funds, fund of hedge funds, absolute return managers and private equity partners.
HSBC head of fund services, Asia Pacific, Lillian Wong said the group has seen increasing demand from its global hedge fund clients for “onshore servicing in Australia as they target the superannuation dollar”.
Wong said the group aims to provide its clients with a “seamless service” for their Australian domiciled businesses.
The group’s new alternative fund services division will be led by Howard Yip and will be part of the wider HSBC global banking business led by Janie Wanless in Australia.
The Ledger – Lehman Brothers, the troubled investment bank, is considering the sale of all or part of its prized money management division to private equity firms to raise billions of dollars of capital and ease the pressure caused by losses related to real estate.
The move would be the latest by a Wall Street firm forced to sell off high-end assets, following the recent sale by Merrill Lynch of its stake in Bloomberg L.P. and the sale by Citigroup last month of its large German consumer banking franchise.
Lehman sent letters last week to a number of financial companies, including private equity firms like Kohlberg, Kravis & Roberts, J. C. Flowers, the Blackstone Group, the Carlyle Group and Apollo Management, to test interest in its money management division, according to several people briefed on its contents.
The letter, a so-called memorandum of understanding, did not put a value on the division. It said that interested parties could bid for all or some of the pieces but encouraged bidders to make an offer for the whole business.
Money Management- Despite tightening credit conditions, hedge funds are continuing to gain favour, with the latest Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index up 2 per cent in May.
The president of Credit Suisse Index Company, Oliver Schupp, said the index had been up in circumstances where hedge funds had continued to generate positive performance across strategies.
“We estimate that each of the 10 hedge fund sectors will end May with gains for the month, with long/short equity being the highest performing sector,” he said.
Money Management- A survey of some of Australia’s biggest superannuation funds has found that they intend to increase their average allocations to hedge funds from 2.5 to 3.5 per cent over the next two to five years, according to a survey by the University of New South Wales Business School.
The survey, commissioned by the Australian chapter of the hedge fund industry body Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), researched the plans of some of Australia’s major superannuation funds.
Money Management- Ratings house Standard and Poor’s has withdrawn its ratings from six of Colonial First State’s (CFS’s) fund-of-hedge-fund strategies.
The ratings house announced today that the decision had been reached following an internal strategic review by CFS, which had decided that the funds would be terminated on May 26.
“S&P has withdrawn the ratings on the funds following CFS’s announcement that it will no longer continue to run its fund-of-hedge-fund strategies and that the existing products will be terminated,” S&P fund analyst Simon Scott said.
