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.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Singapore hedge fund manager, 3 Degrees Asset Management, is launching ADF Prime Ltd, a credit opportunities fund that will invest primarily in the performing debt obligations of Asian companies that have been mispriced as a result of the Global Financial Crisis.
3 Degrees also manages the award winning Asian Debt Fund, an Asian distressed debt fund that has been active since 2004.
In Asia, debt prices have corrected far more sharply than in the US and Europe. This is driven by technical factors, the fund manager says, as Asian investment banks unwind their portfolios, global hedge funds close their Asian operations, and capital is generally pulled from the region.
The new fund will capitalize on the systemic inefficiencies endemic to Asian credit markets. Due to the limited number of players, and the highly relationship‐driven nature of Asian markets, inefficiencies are being exaggerated by the global financial crisis.
Targeting quality companies that either have, or can generate, enough cash flow to repay maturing debt without dependence on capital markets, the fund seeks annual, unlevered net returns in excess of 25%.
3 Degrees has received numerous awards, including “Best Asian Distressed Debt Fund” and “Best Singapore Hedge Fund”. In 2007, Moe Ibrahim, the founder, was selected as one of 20 Rising Stars of Hedge Funds by Institutional Investor. ADF Prime will be co‐managed by Moe Ibrahim and Jeff Tolk.
ADF Prime is also available to institutional investors and ultra high net worth individuals via the Firm’s Managed Accounts platform.
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New York (HedgeCo.Net) – If Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gets his way, hedge funds and private equity firms will be placed under the supervision of the federal government.
“Over the past 18 months, we have faced the most severe global financial crisis in generations,” Geithner said at the House Financial Services Committee hearing on Thursday, adding that “comprehensive reform” is required. “Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.”
Geithner supports a mandatory requirement for hedge funds and other large money management firms to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, an issue that has been at the forefront of political debate recently. Hedge funds would also have to keep the SEC updated on their trades and strategies.
A systemic risk regulator would be imposed that could force these firms to raise capital or halt borrowing. The regulator may also seize hedge funds or other non-bank entities if they felt it was necessary, though it was unclear which agencies would be responsible for handling that task.
“You don’t want to vest in any single institution such broad powers,” he explained.
The Obama administration has been vocal about their desire to regulate the $1 trillion hedge fund industry. After two massive hedge funds within Bear Stearns collapsed in the summer of 2007, eventually leading to the demise of the bank, many members of Congress started supporting regulation with the notion that hedge funds have a direct impact on our economy.
Also backing the argument was the monumental damage caused by credit default swaps and the lack of regulation behind them, as was the case with American International Group.
“The days when a major insurance company could bet the house on credit default swaps with no one watching and no credible backing to protect the company or taxpayers much end,” Geithner added, referring to the AIG debacle.
Under the proposed regulation, the market on which these credit default swaps and other derivatives would be regulated for the first time.
The SEC has tried previously to impose a registration requirement on hedge funds, only to have it overturned by a federal appeals court in 2006.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
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Wall Street Journal – Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA said Thursday it has decided to pull out of the hedge-fund market, shutting down Proxima Alfa Investments and exiting two other joint ventures.
Spain’s second-biggest bank by assets said the pullout was the result of tough market conditions and in anticipation of potential effects from the financial crisis on the hedge-fund industry. The closure affects around 100 employees, and represents less than 1% of the bank’s €130 billion ($165 billion) in assets under management, said a BBVA executive, whose name the bank declined to release.
The global financial crisis has cooled a once-blossoming romance between banks and hedge funds, with some banks experiencing how being too closely associated with the industry could taint their image. BBVA’s larger rival Banco Santander SA recently took a hit to its reputation from news that its fund-of-hedge-funds manager Optimal Investment Services had an exposure of €2.3 billion to Bernard Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme. It has since said it would shut down Optimal.
In addition to Proxima, BBVA is winding down Altitude and exiting BBVA Partners, two smaller alternative-investment managers. Most of the 2,000 or so clients that are invested in the 24 funds affected by the closure are institutional investors, the BBVA official said.
With $930 million in assets under management, Proxima Alfa was BBVA’s biggest bet on hedge funds. The bank invested $1 billion of its own funds when it formed Proxima in 2006 as a $3 billion joint venture with hedge-fund company Vega Asset Management.
Bloomberg – James Pallotta and Christopher Pia, hedge-fund managers who recently struck out on their own, are discovering just how much the global financial crisis is reducing investors’ appetite for risk.
Pallotta, who split from Tudor Investment Corp. last month, and Pia, who spent 13 years managing money for Moore Capital Management LLC, probably will raise about $500 million apiece this year, according to brokers who provide loans and administrative services to hedge funds. Michael Ryan, who left Credit Suisse Group AG to open Jai Capital Management, will top out at around the same amount, according to the brokers, who asked not to be identified because the funds are private.
Investors, who put more than $1 billion each into seven new hedge funds last year, are scaling back after the industry posted its worst year on record in 2008. Whether it’s a big-name manager like Boston-based Pallotta or a newcomer, that threshold will be harder to cross this year than in the boom of 2002 through 2007.
Daily Guide – Foreign investors in the Nigerian capital market withdrew some $4 billion from the Nigeria Stock Exchange and precipitated its steep decline, the Exchange’s Director General, Professor Ndidi Okereke-Onyiuke has said.
Appearing before the joint Senate Committees on Finance, Capital Market, Banking, Insurance and other financial institutions investigating the economic crisis facing the country, Mrs Okereke-Onyiuke said in 2008, foreign hedge fund managers went out and withdrew their investment of N556 billion due to the financial crisis in their countries.
Okereke, who was responding to questions posed to her by Senators as to the reasons why share prices in the stock market kept crashing despite assurances by financial managers that the fundamentals of the nation’s economy are strong, said hedge fund managers were shocked by the global financial crisis and quickly withdrew their investments from Nigeria and took it back to their countries.
Bloomberg – Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, received a $138 billion emergency lifeline from the government to support its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. and prevent the global financial crisis from deepening.
The U.S. will invest $20 billion in Bank of America and guarantee $118 billion of assets “as part of its commitment to support financial-market stability,” the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a joint statement shortly after midnight in Washington.
Forbes – Private equity investors in Asia are increasingly fearful of fraud within their portfolio companies as the global economic downturn puts mounting pressure on firms in the region.
The global financial crisis has already caused significant damage to private equity-backed companies in Asia, with shares plunging and demand drying up for everything from electronics to manufactured goods.
But corporate fraud, a scourge that can be more prevalent and harder to detect in emerging economies such as China and India, can quickly turn a bad private equity investment into a disaster.
AllAfrica.com – While the bank chiefs and the Central Bank of Nigeria have consistently advised Nigerians to keep faith with the ailing Nigerian Stock Exchange market, an investment adviser is suggesting that Nigerian investors should begin to seek alternative ways of investing their monies for better returns as the bearish trend in the market continues unabated.
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Mr. Olumide Oyetan, a director with the Stanbic IBTC Asset Management gave the suggestion when he delivered a paper titled: "Global financial crisis and its impact on the Nigerian financial market" at the Stanbic IBTC Asset Management limited end of year investors’ forum held in Lagos. According to him, "the benefit of alternative investments is to enhance total return and diversification of investments."
The alternative areas of investments he said are; Private Equity/Venture Capital, Credit/Structured Notes, Emotional Assets (Coins, Jewellery, Fine Art & Wine, etc) and Timber/Farmlands and Oil & Gas. Other options with high returns are "derivatives or physicals such as managed futures, commodities, currencies, hedge fund strategies, trading in volatility, carbon emissions, and weather derivatives among others."
