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 – Sparx Group Co., Asia’s biggest hedge-fund firm, will open its first global macro hedge fund to new investors as the company departs from its traditional focus on equities to return to profit.
Cayman Island-based Sparx Global Markets Fund began on Aug. 12 with the firm’s own capital of 900 million yen ($9.7 million), said Masaki Taniguchi, president of Sparx Asset Management Co. The fund wagers on stocks, bonds and currencies based on fundamental analysis of world economic trends in the Group of Ten nations, similar to the George Soros’s Quantum Fund, he said.
Bloomberg – K+S AG, Europe’s largest maker of potash for fertilizers, and competitor Israel Chemicals Ltd. fell in local trading after a Russian rival’s contract in India prompted speculation that prices will come under pressure.
The drop mirrors declines at North American producers Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. and Mosaic Co. on July 10 after RBC Capital Markets reported that Russian producer OAO Silvinit may have sold the crop nutrient for less than analysts expected. K+S lost as much as 5.4 percent and the Israeli company dropped 3 percent.
Soros Fund Management LLC, billionaire investor George Soros’s hedge fund firm, owns about 1.9 percent of Potash Corp after reducing the stake to 5.6 million shares at the end of the first quarter from 5.9 million at the beginning of the year.
June 16 (Bloomberg) — Arvind Raghunathan , former head of Deutsche Bank AG’s global arbitrage business, will open his new hedge-fund firm next month with more than $1 billion, a sign that investors are trickling back after record losses last year.
Roc Capital Management LP’s assets will include $500 million in a separate account from Deutsche Bank, according to people familiar with the New York-based firm, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. It’s the largest hedge-fund startup this year, one of at least eight expected to raise more than $250 million each, according to brokers who provide credit and lend securities to managers.
The ventures are being set up by executives who left banks that scaled back trading to conserve capital, or hedge funds whose 2008 losses will limit bonuses for at least another year. Investors see them as an opportunity to get in early with the next George Soros or Paul Tudor Jones, who have outperformed rivals for most of their careers.
First Post – Hopes are growing that the world has turned the corner, after a number of high profile figures made encouraging noises about the state of the global economy. Billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros said that "the economic freefall has been stopped" and "national economic stimulus programmes are starting to take effect".
His thoughts marked a change of heart, as he was negative on the markets last year. He expects Asia to recover first and the US shortly thereafter.
Wealth Bulletin – Satellite Asset Management, a $2.8bn (€2.1bn) hedge fund established by former employees of billionaire George Soros, is winding down due to investor redemptions, Bloomberg said on its website late Friday, according to a Reuters report.
The New York-based firm, which had nearly $7bn in client assets at the end of 2007, was launched in 1999 by Lief Rosenblatt, Gabe Nechamkin and Mark Sonnino, who worked together at Soros Fund Management.
Reuters India – Satellite Asset Management LP, a $2.8 billion (1.84 billion pounds) hedge fund founded by former employees of billionaire George Soros, is closing down because of client withdrawals, Bloomberg said on its website late Friday.
The New York-based firm has started returning money to investors from its three funds, Satellite Overseas Fund Ltd, Satellite Fund II LP and Satellite Credit Opportunities Ltd, the report said, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg – Billionaire investor George Soros’s Soros Fund Management LLC was fined 489 million forint ($2.2 million) for attempting to manipulate the share price of OTP Bank Nyrt., Hungary’s largest bank, the country’s financial regulator said.
The Soros fund attempted on Oct. 9 to “send out false or misleading signals about a security’s supply and demand or its share price” and short sold OTP shares, the regulator, known as PSZAF, said in a statement late yesterday. The short selling caused the shares to drop 14 percent in the final 30 minutes of trade, the regulator said.
Short-sellers sell borrowed securities, hoping to profit by repurchasing them later at a lower price and then returning them to the owner. Budapest-based OTP is Hungary’s largest lender.
The Ledger – The financial crisis may have turned much of Wall Street’s wealth into dross, but a select group of hedge fund managers has managed to maintain a golden touch that might make King Midas blush.
As major markets and economies careened downward last year, 25 top managers reaped a total of $11.6 billion in pay by trading above the pain in the markets, according to an annual ranking of top hedge fund earners by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine, which comes out Wednesday.
James H. Simons, a former math professor who has made billions year after year for the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, earned $2.5 billion running computer-driven trading strategies. John A. Paulson, who rode to riches by betting against the housing market, came in second with reported gains of $2 billion. And George Soros, also a perennial name on the rich list of secretive moneymakers, pulled in $1.1 billion.
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 – Billionaire investor George Soros said the current economic upheaval has its roots in the financial deregulation of the 1980s and signals the end of a free-market model that has since dominated capitalist countries.
Liberalization of the financial industry begun by the Reagan administration has led to a series of crises forcing government intervention, Soros told economists and bankers at a Feb. 20 private dinner at Columbia University in New York. The global recession, triggered by the collapse of the U.S. housing market, has “damaged the financial system itself,” he said.
Online Journal – WMR has learned from well-placed sources that international hedge fund mogul and financier of “progressive” causes George Soros has been, for a number of years, infiltrating 9/11 “truth” organizations, groups advocating election reform, and so-called “independent journalism” enterprises in order to hijack agendas and, eventually, cause the groups to collapse from within or be absorbed into larger organizations servile to Soros and his agenda.
By far, the largest group Soros and his allies has infiltrated and taken over is the Democratic Party of the United States. It now totally adheres to a corporatist line and has purged from its leadership Dr. Howard Dean and replaced him with Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, a Democratic Leadership Council adherent. The Soros faction and its allies has also seen to it that Bill Richardson, Caroline Kennedy, and others who represent the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party” have been shut out of the Obama administration.
Bloomberg – Billionaire investor George Soros’s hedge-fund firm bought more shares of Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. in the fourth quarter, almost doubling its holdings.
Soros Fund Management LLC bought 16 million shares of the Petrobras’ U.S. traded shares, bringing its stake to 1.45 percent, according to a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based firm increased its holdings in Potash by 2.6 million shares to 2 percent in the fourth quarter. Petrobras and Potash are now the firm’s two biggest reported U.S. stocks.
