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.
The Boston Globe – Hedge funds are having their best year since 1998, yet most fund managers still are well below their peaks before the market’s meltdown last year, industry analysts said.
Hedge fund assets rose 2.5 percent in July, contributing to a 9.9 percent climb over the first seven months of the year, and the best year-to-date results since 1998, Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index said.
Bloomberg – Moore Capital Management LLC, founded by Louis Bacon almost two decades ago, tapped Greg Coffey, former GLG Partners Inc.’s top-performing money manager, to be co-chief investment officer of Moore’s European business.
Coffey, 37, will join London-based Moore Europe Capital Management LLP with a 12-person team. Eric Dannheim, a senior member of that team will become chief operating officer of Moore Europe.
“Greg Coffey is one of the most impressive trading professionals operating anywhere in the world today,” said Bacon in a statement announcing the hires. “I have known Greg for a number of years and we have similar views with respect to markets and investment decisions,” he said.
Bacon, 52, has been the sole chief investment officer for the New York-based firm since he started it in 1990. A so-called macro investor — chasing macroeconomic trends by trading stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities — he’s been adding employees and attracting capital this year even as other funds have been firing personnel and facing client withdrawals in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Reuters – Lasair Capital, a hedge fund industry newcomer that boasts General Electric Co as its blue-chip backer, said on Tuesday that it has hired a senior investment officer to help put $180 million to work.
Carrie McCabe, who founded Lasair as a "next generation" hedge fund firm earlier this year, told investors that Jennifer Coffey will now help select hedge funds as well as infrastructure and timber assets for clients.
"Jennifer will report directly to me and I will continue to oversee all investment decisions," McCabe, who cemented her reputation in the hedge fund industry while running Blackstone Alternative Asset Management and FRM Americas, told clients.
The Money Times- A $100 million here, a $100 million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real compensation. U.K.-based hedge fund manager GLG Partners (NYSE: GLG) announced today that it has hired Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) partner Driss Ben-Brahim. In 2006, Ben-Brahim sent the London press into a frenzy when it was reported that he earned a $100 million payday.
With those kinds of numbers being thrown around, leaving Goldman might look like an odd decision, but Ben-Brahim can always point to the man whose shoes he’ll be filling. GLG is losing its highest-profile portfolio manager, Greg Coffey, who is walking away from a $250 million stock payday to launch his own fund.
Taipei Times- Two years there was a music festival at Knebworth, in central Britain, that was very different. At “Hedgestock” 4,000 hedge fund managers and investors paid US$1,000 a ticket for a weekend of rock’n’roll, champagne, laser clay pigeon shooting and seminars on arcane aspects of how to make even more millions.
Some wore beads as part send-up, part veneration of Woodstock, 1960s hippies and “hedgies” bound by the bond of anti-establishment love of liberty, as if the aims of getting stoned and making a fortune gambling in unregulated financial markets were curiously united. The Who played out the event, with proceeds going to the Teenager Cancer Trust. “Hedgies” were the cool face of capitalism.
This year, a rerun of Hedgestock would be pilloried and rightly so. Oil prices are spiraling higher and the plight of stricken banks, property companies and housebuilders is made more acute because of hedge funds’ aggressive speculation. Late last month there were fresh fears that the Western financial order simply could not cope and global stock markets reeled. Hedge funds are emerging as one of the triggers of a first order crisis.
