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Houston Chronicle – A London-based hedge fund manager and its chief investment officer have agreed to a nearly $18 million settlement resolving U.S. regulators’ allegations that one of its funds defrauded U.S. mutual funds and investors through trading practices such as market-timing.
The Securities and Exchange Commission and Headstart Advisers Ltd. on Monday separately announced a settlement in which the firm neither admitted nor denied allegations covering the period September 1998 through September 2003.
Headstart Fund Ltd., a hedge fund that had been incorporated in the Bahamas and is now defunct, will pay a $17 million penalty to resolve a complaint the SEC brought in April 2008. London-based Headstart Advisers will pay an additional $200,000, and Chief Investment Officer Najy N. Nasser will pay $600,000. The firm and Nasser are also barred from future violations of antifraud provisions of U.S. securities laws.
Houston Chronicle – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will ask Congress to bring large hedge funds, private-equity firms and derivatives markets under federal supervision for the first time as part of a revamp of U.S. financial rules.
The Treasury chief will present his proposed framework at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington today. Under the new so-called rules of the road, the government would get powers to seize and wind down any financial company big enough to destabilize the banking system.
The Obama administration is counting on public anger over the taxpayer-financed rescues of American International Group Inc., Bear Stearns Cos. and other firms to help it win approval for the changes, which could be the most sweeping since the 1930s. Policy makers want to improve the oversight of the financial system now rather than wait until the crisis is over, administration officials said on condition of anonymity.
Houston Chronicle – Hedge funds, historically an investment reserved for big-ticket investors, are seemingly like mutual funds in that they typically invest in stocks and bonds. They have the added glamour and allure, however, of taking significant risks and gambles with their investments. Hedge funds may take risks by purchasing derivatives, or they may bet on the fall in price of particular securities by selling the securities short. (When you short sell, you borrow a security from a broker, sell it and then hope to buy it back later at a lower price.) Some hedge funds even invest in other hedge funds.
Earlier this decade, hedge funds got lots of attention, and plenty of wealthier investors were throwing big bucks into them. The allure was hedge funds claiming to have sidestepped the bear market in the early 2000s.
