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.
New York Post – The high-profile insider-trading case against hedge-fund king Raj Rajaratnam of Galleon Group is getting a high-profile judge who’s earned the nickname on Wall Street of Judge Dread.
US District Court Judge Jed Rakoff is expected to oversee the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against the billionaire hedgie, who was charged Friday with running a $20 million insider-trading scheme.
On Wall Street, Rakoff has gained notoriety for nixing a $33 million settlement between the SEC and Bank of America over charges the bank hid billions in losses and bonus payments from shareholders in order to push through BofA’s merger with Merrill Lynch.
NASDAQ – The pace of new European hedge fund launches has stalled this year after the industry’s dismal 2008 performance made investors unwilling to back new ventures.
Data provider EuroHedge Monday said just 47 funds started trading in the first six months of the year, the least in a decade and less than half the number in the same period of 2008. The new funds collectively raised $2.09 billion – a figure that in "normal" times might have been raised by one fund alone.
However, EuroHedge said there are signs the second half could be more fruitful, with several high-profile funds already started or in the pipeline. Those include Theleme, a global equities strategy being set up by Patrick Degorce, a co-founder of The Children’s Investment Fund who left to strike out on his own, and Gyldmark Liquid Macro Fund, a fund started by former BlueCrest Capital portfolio managers.
CNBC – People who invested with Bernard Madoff were greedy and happy to accept high returns without probing too much in the way these were achieved, Hugh Hendry, chief investment officer at hedge fund Eclectica, told CNBC Tuesday.
"I’m sympathetic for people losing money but I think this pejorative term of being greedy still applies," Hendry told CNBC.com. "There was an implicit greed in not questioning and just accepting unnatural returns."
"They didn’t show the requisite amount of fear that would have generated the curiosity to investigate," he said, adding that for every one Madoff investor, there were ten who stayed on the sidelines.
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.
