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.
Bloomberg – Hedge fund investors’ growing demands for separate accounts may be an overreaction to increasing redemptions and fraud, participants said at an industry conference in Hong Kong this week.
Investors are demanding accounts that allow them to tailor investments, see trades and get out when they want, instead of the traditional way of pooling their money in a fund, as managers try to curb redemptions and after U.S. financier Bernard Madoff’s conviction for running a Ponzi scheme.
A record $155 billion was pulled from hedge funds last year, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc., while capital outflow may accelerate to $168 billion this year, a Deutsche Bank AG survey in March showed.
Bloomberg – Assets owned by hedge funds including borrowings may have fallen by 75 percent to a decade- low, with less competition paving the way for better returns, said Blaine Tomlinson, chairman of Financial Risk Management Ltd.
The total book size of assets owned by hedge funds may have declined to $2 trillion, from $8 trillion, he said at the GaimAsia 2009 hedge fund conference in Hong Kong today, reducing the industry to a level last seen a decade ago. Tomlinson founded Financial Risk Management, a London-based fund of funds manager overseeing $10 billion, in 1991.
Bloomberg – DragonBack Capital Ltd., a Hong Kong-based manager co-founded by a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executive, reopened its flagship hedge fund to investors after redemptions cut assets in the fund.
Assets in the Asia-Pacific Equity Multistrategy Fund fell 47 percent from the end of October peak, to $310 million, Chief Executive Officer Robert Lance said in an interview yesterday.
The fund’s 3.75 percent gain in 2008 put it among less than a third of hedge funds that made money in the worst year for the global industry. Investors have reduced holdings in some profitable funds after their weightings in portfolios exceeded limits set for specific hedge fund strategies.
Bloomberg – DragonBack Capital Ltd., a Hong Kong-based manager co-founded by a former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. executive, reopened its flagship hedge fund to investors after redemptions cut assets in the fund.
Assets in the Asia-Pacific Equity Multistrategy Fund fell 47 percent from the end of October peak, to $310 million, Chief Executive Officer Robert Lance said in an interview yesterday.
International Herald Tribune – A Silicon Valley hedge fund manager has been arrested in Hong Kong on charges that he bilked investors out of at least $5 million.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday in San Jose federal court, Albert Hu faces six counts of wire fraud charges for an investment fraud scheme involving hedge funds he administered from 2002 to 2008, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Bloomberg – Penjing Asset Management, a Hong Kong-based hedge fund of funds manager overseeing about $520 million, said it may not get any performance fees until next year, and declining income will restrict staff bonuses.
The company, which ran the fourth-best-performing Asia- Pacific fund of hedge funds last year, plans to keep all its 22 staff as layoffs by rivals make it cheaper to retain talent, said Chief Investment Officer Ronnie Wu.
“Realistically, 2009 we are just trying to climb the high- water mark,” Wu, 40, said in an interview yesterday, referring to a fund’s peak net asset value. “If we’re lucky, maybe we will get some incentive fees in 2010. It will be tough. The senior guys will take a pay cut. But if we can keep everybody intact, I think the future will get better again.”
Bloomberg - Jean-Marie Eveillard, who beat 99 percent of rival equity fund managers last year by hoarding cash instead of borrowing it, is loading up on Japanese insurers and Hong Kong developers.
“Leverage eliminates your staying power,” said Eveillard, whose $16.8 billion First Eagle Global Fund beat the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index every year this decade. “If things go well, you look even better, but if things go badly, you end up doing worse,” he said in an interview from his office at Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder Advisers LLC overlooking Central Park in New York. “You could blow up if big leverage is being used.”
TREND Information – Major Asia and Pacific markets traded higher Tuesday in the waning days of a dismal year, reported CNN.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei closed 1.3 percent higher during an abbreviated final trading day of 2008. Despite the positive session, the index closed with its worst-ever annual percentage fall, losing 42.1 percent.
Elsewhere across the region, the KOSPI in Seoul was up 2.3 percent in afternoon trading, while Australia’s All Ordinaries index was 1.3 percent higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng picked up 0.9 percent.
Forbes – The investment banks and global hedge funds that are the usual buyers of debt and equity in struggling Asian companies have largely fled the market, leaving the distressed asset space to home-grown investors.
Local players with the cash — and the stomach — to remain in the hunt for cheap assets find themselves with the luxuries of time, choice and pricing power.
"We’re just taking our time and doing our homework, because a lot of the traditional buyers are not in the market," said Chris Gradel, managing partner at Hong Kong-based Pacific Alliance Group, which runs $1.6 billion in hedge funds.
