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.
Hartford Courant – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man convicted of running a hedge fund scam in Connecticut who claimed New York University owed him a diploma.
Hakan Yalincak (yal-in-SACK’), an NYU undergraduate, was sentenced in 2007 to 3 1/2 years in prison for persuading investors to pour millions into a nonexistent Greenwich-based hedge fund.
His lawsuit against NYU seeks to have F’s in biology and algebra raised to passing grades so he’ll have enough credits to graduate.
Wall Street Journal Blogs – Are hedge-fund managers making a comeback with investors? The great recession hammered the hedge-fund industry in 2008. Returns tumbled, redemptions soared and investors began questioning the very underpinnings of the industry. Active managers promise to beat, rather than match, the market’s overall returns and charge fees that can be at least 10 times higher than those of index funds.
The WSJ reported in June that an increasing number of big investors are concluding that stock and bond pickers failed to add any value in the market turmoil and are shifting to index funds. A survey by Greenwich Associates at the time found that about one in five institutional investors said they recently had shifted money away from active managers and into passive index strategies. That was up from just 4% who expected to make that shift when asked from July to October 2008.
Stamford Advocate – With a new regulatory regime hanging over the industry’s head and a field of shellshocked investors looking for safety, it may seem that hedge fund managers are poised to make a rush into the mutual fund arena.
But there’s a disagreement over how many hedge fund managers will follow AQR Capital Management LLC of Greenwich and others into mutual funds.
Ben Alpert, a hedge fund analyst at Morningstar Inc., said he expects the move will be significant. But David Kabiller, founding principal and head of client strategies for AQR Capital Management, said he wouldn’t bet it will be very big.
Stamford Advocate – Debra Ryan, the girlfriend of Samuel Israel, convicted for his role in a $400 million fraud involving the collapse of Stamford-based hedge-fund firm Bayou Group LLC, was sentenced to three years probation for aiding his escape.
Ryan, a decorator who once rented a house on Highland Avenue in Greenwich, also was ordered to be confined at home for four months and not to have any contact with Israel.
Israel, 49, pleaded guilty in March to faking his suicide by abandoning his car on the Bear Mountain bridge with the words "suicide is painless" written on the windshield and fleeing the day he was to begin a 20-year sentence. He pleaded guilty to fraud in 2005 after admitting he hid $400 million in losses at Bayou.
Stamford Advocate – Although it had bipartisan support, a bill requiring hedge funds operating in Connecticut to disclose conflicts of interest to investors died in the House of Representatives Wednesday, the final day of the 2009 legislative session.
"It ‘blew up’ like Amaranth, like Bayou," said state Rep. Ryan Barry, D-Manchester, who co-sponsored the proposal with Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, co-sponsored the legislation.
Barry was referring to the high-profile collapses of the Stamford-based Bayou Group LLC in 2005 and Greenwich-based Amaranth Advisors LLC in 2006, which inspired him and Duff, as Banks Committee chairmen, to pursue hedge fund regulations.
Reuters – Improving markets and a need to recoup 2008 losses will prompt investors to pour $50 billion (30 billion pounds) into hedge funds this year and slow redemptions, Barclays Capital said in a report on Tuesday.
More than 300 investors surveyed by Barclays’ prime brokerage unit reported stashing, on average, 14 percent of their portfolios in cash. Nearly 80 percent of these investors said they plan to start putting some of that cash back into hedge funds.
"In spite of dramatic changes in the investor landscape, certain investors were ready to deploy their cash balances aggressively once markets stabilized," Brian Reilly, a Barclays Capital managing director, said in a statement.
Tampa Bay Online – Some consider them good capitalists. Others see them as opportunists. Still others call them vultures.
Whatever the name, hedge fund investors likely will be major players in Florida real estate in the next few years, buying up mortgage notes — troubled or not — for a fraction of their original value.
Often, the funds are passive investors. But here in Sun City Center, Jim Biggins is fighting to protect his family business, Cypress Creek Assisted Living Residence, from a Greenwich, Conn.-based hedge fund called Silver Point Capital.
Opalesque – Last week, we heard of fund launches from Galena (energy); Verulam (commodity); Twin Tree; Paulson & Co (distressed property); Abax (Asia macro); Odey (Ucits III); Pictet (agriculture); and Liontrust (European).
The Canadian Hedge Watch Hedge Fund Composite Index was up 2.26% in April (+4.66% YTD); RBC Hedge 250 Index 2.37%, 2.6% YTD; Morningstar 1000 Hedge Fund Index 3.4% (est.), 3.11% YTD; Lyxor’s investable Global Hedge Fund index -0.45%, 0.93% YTD; Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index 3.49%, 3.91% YTD; Scotia Capital Canadian Hedge Fund Index -0.61%, 4.98% YTD; And the Eurekahedge April report showed hedge funds were up 3.9% YTD, and that the industry assets were now at $1.30tn.
American Chronicle – An investment professional from Greenwich with more than 20 years of experience is going out on his own by starting a Stamford-based advisory firm for small- to medium-size companies from here to
Texas.
Peter Schweinfurth, a former senior executive at Avenue Capital, a hedge fund based in New York City and London, recently launched Gulf + Eastern to offer restructuring, turnaround and mergers-and-acquisitions advice for small but growing family-owned firms focused on consumer products and the service sector.
Chicago Sun-Times – Sears Holdings Corp. Chairman and hedge-fund guru Edward S. Lampert failed for the fourth year to make a list he once topped — the richest hedge-fund managers in the nation.
Lampert, who takes no salary from the Hoffman Estates-based Sears, is nowhere to be found on the list published Wednesday by Institutional Investor’s Alpha magazine. Lampert topped the list published in 2005, after pocketing a $1.02 billion salary in 2004 for his leadership of Greenwich, Conn.-based ESL Investments.
Bloomberg – Finding a parking spot for your Mercedes or BMW on Greenwich Avenue, the main shopping strip of the U.S. hedge-fund capital, used to be a challenge. Not anymore.
With the recession hammering retail sales, empty curbside spaces abound along the suburban Connecticut thoroughfare, known as the Rodeo Drive of the northeast, and “For Rent” signs decorate vacant storefronts. Ann Taylor, Banana Republic and Borders have all closed their Greenwich Avenue locations.
As banks and hedge funds cut jobs or close down in the worst financial crisis since the 1930s, Greenwich merchants are suffering sales declines. Some stores are simply packing it in. Many are renegotiating rents, cutting inventory or offering cheaper products.
Norwalk Advocate – It could be six months to a year before major investors start pumping money back into the market, according to a survey by Quinnipiac University and Greenwich Roundtable, which represents hedge fund investors who control or manage more than $1 trillion in assets.
The survey of 89 private and institutional investors was conducted from Jan. 26 to Feb. 6.
Osman Kilic, a Quinnipiac professor of finance, said it’s important for these investors to engage in the market because they provide funding for many Main Street businesses.
