The Korea Herald – China Investment Corp., the country’s sovereign wealth fund, is continuing to shift its investments away from cash and is investing billions in hedge funds and private-equity funds, chairman Lou Jiwei said.

China Investment has invested “many times” the $500 million that CIC was reported to have placed in hedge funds and private-equity firms in June, Lou said Saturday in an interview in Beijing. He said China Investment was also investing in fund-of- funds.

Lou said Beijing-based CIC’s performance this year “has not been bad” following last year’s 2.1 percent decline in its global investments. He didn’t elaborate. China Investment Corp. had $297.5 billion in assets and had 87.4 percent of its global portfolio invested in cash and cash equivalents at the end of last year, the fund reported earlier this month.

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Tags: china investment, global-investments, hedge funds, private equity firms, private-equity-funds

Reuters – Bridgewater Associates Inc, one of the world’s biggest hedge-fund managers, said on Tuesday it might be interested in participating in the U.S. Treasury’s public-private investment program, calling it a "big transfer of money from the government to the banks and to the buyers."

Bridgewater manages roughly $80 billion in global investments for a wide array of institutional clients, including foreign governments and central banks.

In a letter to clients, Bridgewater said its interest in buying the distressed assets under the terms being offered would depend on the pricing and on "whether we can get over our fears of partnering with the government."

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Tags: array, bridgewater-associates, central banks, distressed assets, fears, global-investments, governments, hedge-fund-managers, institutional-clients, investment program, money, private investment, reuters, u-s-treasury

Bloomberg – Carl Icahn, the investor angling to sell a 13 percent stake in Imclone Systems Inc. for more than $800 million, is piling up bets in the biotechnology industry.

Icahn and hedge funds he manages have accumulated stakes in at least 10 biotechnology companies that make up a fifth of the investors’ total publicly reported holdings, excluding shares of Icahn Enterprises LP. He and the funds have about $1.3 billion invested in biotech, four times as much as two years ago, and increased those bets by $320 million in the last two months alone, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The 72-year-old has made his personal fortune, estimated at $14.5 billion by Forbes magazine, by investing in companies and then pressuring management into selling their companies at higher share prices. The strategy worked for airlines, refiners and casinos. Icahn is now targeting biotech companies, whose products make them appealing to pharmaceutical giants, such as Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and AstraZeneca Plc, that will be losing patent protection over the next four years on medicines with $84 billion in annual sales.

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Tags: bias, executive-suite, global-investments, investment-firm, natural-gas-prices, right-hand-man, sharkwatch