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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager PMA has chosen to more than triple the number of users of PerTrac CMS in the company’s Hong Kong, Tokyo, New York, London, and Dubai offices.
PerTrac CMS is an alternative investment workflow management solution used for investor relations, capital raising and investment management workflows.
"PMA’s marketing reach has expanded significantly over the last 12 months and we now has marketing teams based in our Dubai and London offices as well as representations in New York," noted PMA Chief Technology Officer Shane McPherson.
PMA was established in July 2002 to provide investment advisory and investment with assets over $2 billion, PMA currently has over 70 professionals employed in Hong Kong, Sydney, London and Dubai, and became a member of the SPARX group in April 200, the largest publicly listed asset manager in Asia.
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San Francisco Chronicle - A major investor called on Yahoo Inc. to sell its search business to Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday, adding to the pressure on the Sunnyvale Web portal to restart talks with its rival.
Meanwhile, Yahoo agreed to water down an employee severance plan that had been criticized as extravagant, raising speculation that the company was shopping itself for a sale. The changes were made to settle a lawsuit in which shareholders accused Yahoo of devising the severance plan to foil Microsoft’s takeover bid earlier this year.
Ivory Investment Management, a hedge fund that owns a 1.5 percent stake in Yahoo, sent a letter to board members that said a sale would garner $15 billion and help restore the company’s tumbling finances.
Hedge Week.com - Pacific Alternative Asset Management Company, an Irvine, California-based fund of hedge funds manager with USD9bn in assets has announced the recruitment of the investment team of KBC Alpha Asset Management, a USD700 million Asia-focused fund of hedge funds manager.
KBC Alpha was established in 2001 by chief investment officer Neale Safaty as the fund of hedge funds division of KBC Alternative Investment Management. The fund investment team will be integrated into Paamco’s global portfolio management team and will initially operate as a separate division within the firm known as Pan Asia Alpha Strategies.
Reuters - Hedge funds using technical indicators are likely to fare better in the next two years than those purely basing their strategy on economic fundamentals, a survey of around 200 investors showed on Wednesday.
The survey of asset managers, institutions, and high net worth investors at the Global Alternative Investment Management (GAIM) Fund of Funds conference in Geneva showed 36 percent saw such trading-based strategies set to outperform in 2009-2010.
These strategies generally use technical indicators or a combination of technical and fundamental indicators to make short or medium-term bets on market movements.
Long/short equity strategies were chosen by 16.7 percent. Long/short managers vary their overall market exposure via long positions in those equities that they expect to outperform the broader market and short positions in those expected to underperform.
Tehran Times - Permal Investment Management, the hedge fund investment division of U.S. asset manager Legg Mason Inc, is aiming to raise up to $500 million to take advantage of a boom in distressed sales of hedge fund holdings, the Financial Times said.
Hedge funds investors have been selling their holdings at a discount to escape restrictions on withdrawals amid a global rush for cash, according to the paper.
The new fund has been ""designed to take advantage of investors’ need for liquidity,"" Omar Kodmani head of Permal’s London office, told the paper.
""There is an unusual number of sellers out there and those who are holding funds with a one-year lock-up or even a three-month wait to the next redemption window need to get out at a discount,"" Kodmani was quoted as saying.
Globe and Mail - Goodwood Inc., a value-oriented manager, briefed investors Thursday on a dismal September. There’s a lot of these letters going out from hedge fund managers. Goodwood’s funds were down 16 per cent last month, bringing the year-to-date loss to 32 per cent. Year-to-date, the S&P/TSX benchmark is down 13 per cent.
Goodwood executives Peter Puccetti and Cam MacDonald used their September letter to unitholders to explain the madness of markets, and plead for patience and perspective. They certainly deserve a hearing. But investors who bought into hedge funds on the basis of absolute returns - making money in good markets and bad - are going to struggle with these pleas.
“We have seen many well-known investment management operations badly harmed as a result of their leverage exacerbating the effects of the ongoing credit crunch and deleveraging we are currently living through,” said Goodwood’s team.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - AA platform for asset managers and advisers to create SICAV SIF funds in Luxembourg has been launched by KMG SICAV SIF. The platform caters to all asset classes, including hedge funds. There are no restrictions on leverage.
Thee process allows managers to focus on investment management, the process allows managers to focus on investment management. . The platform takes care of incorporation, custody, transfers and administration. In addition it can also offer a Luxembourg address and office for the fund, organise annual general meetings of shareholders and supply investors with statements, day-to-day management and general organization as well as order placing and execution, investment performance reports, promotion and distribution and corporate branding.
The open-architecture platform provides a faster route to market with funds established and open for capital within a few weeks rather than months, which it usually takes for a traditional fund. The platform can also provide all back office support, administration and other services for funds.
The KMG SICAV SIF platform is an off the shelf solution, licensed and regulated in Luxembourg. Entities establishing a fund through the platform do not have to apply for additional licences.
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!
Seeking Alpha - Pop Quiz: Which are more expensive, hedge funds or mutual funds?
Sounds like a pretty dumb question, right? Well as regular readers will know, this question is actually central to our views here at AAA. Over two years ago, we told you about an academic study called “Measuring the True Cost of Active Management by Mutual Funds” by Ross Miller of the State University of New York. Miller argued that since mutual funds could be largely replicated by low-cost index funds or ETFs, the implicit fee for their active management was significantly higher than the posted expense ratios. For good reason, the paper was subsequently included in the Q1 2007 edition of the Journal of Investment Management.
The latest to make this argument is Mark Kritzman of Windham Capital. In his article “Who Charges More: Hedge Funds or Mutual Funds?” (Winter 2008 Journal of Applied Corporate Finance) Kritzman says:
Hedge funds, in principle, hedge out market returns and thereby produce a pure alpha; hence the term “hedge fund.” Alpha, in principle, is uncorrelated with market returns. Mutual funds, by contrast, generate returns that comprise a market component and an alpha component. The returns of mutual funds are typically more than 95% correlated with market returns. Taking these factors into account, it is unclear whether hedge funds or mutual funds are more expensive.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.Net)- Asia-based funds are getting bigger according to Alpa Magazine. Several of the funds on the list are relative newcomers and five members of the Asia 25 ranking were not on the list last year.
The 25 largest funds in Asia collectively had $52.2 billion in assets as of March 31, up from $35.5 billion a year earlier and $22.6 billion at the start of 2006.
Tokyo-headquartered Sparx Group Co. ranks No. 1 on the Alpha 2008 Asia Hedge Fund 25 for the second year in a row, with $8.1 billion in assets under management. Hong Kong-based Value Partners, which controls $5.9 billion, is No. 2 again, also retaining its 2007 ranking. Singapore’s Artradis Fund Management climbs from eighth to third by almost quadrupling its size, to $4.7 billion. And although Singapore-based Arisaig Partners slipped from third to fourth, it nearly doubled its assets under management, to $4.3 billion.
Sparx’s lead is precarious. The company is in negotiations to sell a majority stake in its $3 billion Seoul-based Cosmo Investment Management Co., a move that would drop it into second place behind Value Partners and only slightly ahead of Artradis.
BOSTON (Reuters) - Keeley Asset Management, which made its name by selecting small and forgotten companies, said on Wednesday that it took an 18 percent stake in beleaguered money manager Pzena Investment Management.
Keeley now owns 1.09 million Pzena shares, making it one of the company’s biggest owners, according to a regulatory filing.
"They have been through some pretty tough times in the last 12 months, but we still think they are a pretty good shop," said Mark Keeley, who oversees marketing for Chicago-based Keeley, a 26-year-old, family-owned investment firm.
Reuters- Singapore’s Wittenham Investment Management launched a fund of hedge funds to invest in frontier capital markets such as Africa, Middle East and countries in the former Soviet Union.
The MENA Plus fund would start with a minimum $7 million seed capital and has a capacity to take as much as $300 million of funds from investors, said Peter Douglas, an adviser to the fund and founder of hedge fund consultancy GFIA.
"In the emerging Europe, Middle East, and African time zone, we’ve found plenty of experienced managers creating very attractive risk-return profiles," he said in a statement.
Isle of Man Today- An Isle of Man hedge fund has won a prestigious industry award on the third occasion it was shortlisted.
Oceanic Hedge Fund was named Best Energy Hedge Fund on a Risk Adjusted Basis at the eighth annual Hedge Funds Review’s European Performance Awards in 2008.
The fund – which focuses on energy and shipping – was launched in August 2002 with less than US$ 5 million in net assets, but now has assets of $1.7 billion.
Its investment manager is Oceanic Investment Management, a subsidiary of Tufton Oceanic, based at St George’s Court in Douglas.