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.
Interactive Investor – Japan’s Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co said on Monday it planned to cut its unhedged foreign bond holdings while increasing its hedged foreign bond holdings this business year to offset currency risks.
The nation’s third-largest life insurer by assets also said it has been experimenting with trades in yen swap rates since March to seek higher yields, and said it would boost its yen bond holdings mostly in super-long Japanese government bonds.
Meiji Yasuda said it planned to reduce its unhedged foreign bond holdings by about 100 billion yen ($997 million), and raise its currency-hedged foreign bond holdings by 200 billion yen in the year to March 2010.
Reuters – Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, is in New York on Friday to meet with hedge funds, private equity funds and pension groups to promote the government’s plan to cleanse banks’ balance sheets of toxic assets, a source familiar with the meeting said on Friday.
Bair has said she would like all types of investors to participate in the Public-Private Investment Partnership PPIP.L, including private equity groups and individual investors.
FOXNews – MR. LENO: Tell people what happened. I know people have been over it, just –
MR. OBAMA: Well, look, here’s what happened. You’ve got a company, AIG, which used to be just a regular, old insurance company. Then they insured a whole bunch of stuff and they were very profitable and it was a good, solid company.
Then they decided — some smart person decided, let’s put a hedge fund on top of the insurance company and let’s sell these derivative products to banks all around the world — which are basically guarantees or insurance policies on all these sub-prime mortgages.
And this smart person said, you know, none of these things are going to go bust; this sub-prime thing, it’s a great deal, you can make a lot of profit. So they sold a whole bunch of them — billions and billions of dollars. And what happened is, is that when people started going bust on sub-prime mortgages you had $30 worth of debt on every dollar worth of mortgage — and the whole house of cards just started falling down.
Bloomberg – MBIA’s split of its bond- insurance business was challenged by hedge funds alleging the move hurts owners of about $240 billion of debt while benefiting stock investors, executives and some policyholders.
The reorganization, in which MBIA stripped $5.4 billion of assets and its U.S. municipal business from a unit that now mainly insures only structured-finance bonds, “represents the height of insidious greed,” the Aurelius Capital Management and Fir Tree Partners funds said in a lawsuit filed today.
Independent – Lansdowne Partners, the hedge fund, has made almost £13m from a short position in Aviva – and stands to make more if the beleaguered insurer announces a rights issue.
The London-based investor has had a net short position on 0.27 per cent of Aviva shares since 13 February. The stock has since tumbled to less than half its value and on Friday a trade could have netted the fund £12.7m.
Hedge funds which made a killing last year short-selling banks ahead of rights issues are turning their attention to the insurance sector.
Lansdowne last month made a possible profit of almost £2.7m from short positions in Old Mutual and Legal & General, and has continued with trades in Aviva and Prudential. Lansdowne is not alone. Rivals including Odey Asset Management, Diamondback Capital and Gilder Gagnon Howe have also been playing the game.
Globe and Mail – A long-running legal dispute between Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. and a group of hedge funds has produced a sideshow involving the chief executive officer of one of Canada’s biggest mutual fund companies.
Fairfax, a Toronto-based insurance conglomerate, wants Bill Holland, the chief of CI Financial Corp., to testify in connection with its bitter lawsuit, which alleges hedge funds conspired to drive down its stock price.
Neither CI nor Mr. Holland is named in that lawsuit, and no wrongdoing is suggested. And while CI says it will co-operate, Mr. Holland yesterday called the situation absurd.
Reuters – Fund managers who buy U.S. life insurance policies to cash in the death benefits have predicted a bumper year in 2009 as investors seek uncorrelated alternatives to mainstream markets.
Supply is also is expected to increase as more individuals, stung by tumbling investment portfolios, could sell their policies at discounted prices.
Managers of funds investing in traded life policies (TLP) are forecasting that assets under management could as much as double as mandates pour in from other fund managers, hedge funds and high net-worth individuals seeking steady returns uncorrelated to equities and bonds.
BusinessWeek – The market for exotic securities hasn’t entirely gone away. It’s just gone underground—-six feet under, to be precise.
Hedge fund Davidson Kempner Capital Management is plunging into life settlements—a market in which speculators buy-up unwanted life insurance policies from wealthy individuals looking to score some quick cash. The $10 billion New York-based fund is planning on selling so-called “death bonds” to overseas investors, as part of a plan to potentially raise cash to finance its life settlements acquisition business.
Daily Monitor – Wall Street may be bruised and battered, but it still donated more money than any other U.S. industry to President-elect Barack Obama’s inaugural festivities on Tuesday, a study has found.
The Center for Responsive Politics said executives of finance, insurance and real estate companies and their family members gave $7.1 million to Obama’s inaugural committee.
Top donors from the world of high finance included George Soros, Ronald Perelman and David Shaw, the center said.
Bloomberg – Bank of America Corp., the largest U.S. bank by assets, received a $138 billion emergency lifeline from the government to support its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. and prevent the global financial crisis from deepening.
The U.S. will invest $20 billion in Bank of America and guarantee $118 billion of assets “as part of its commitment to support financial-market stability,” the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in a joint statement shortly after midnight in Washington.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net)- Hedge funds started the second quarter of 2008 on a strong note as global stock markets recovered, according to Singapore-based hedge fund research company Eurekahedge.
"The Fed’s aggressive response to the weakness across credit markets and the slowing of economic growth in the U.S. went some way in improving investor sentiment during April," Eurekahedge said on their website.
"Rallying equity markets, on the back of a sharp increase in risk appetites, coupled with market reversals across some other asset classes, such as bonds and currencies, were factors responsible for the month’s gain," Eurekahedge said.
The MSCI World Index jumped 5% in April, completing the best month since November 2004, as confidence returned following the U.S. subprime loan crisis.
Eurekahedge pointed to Japanese managers as the best performers in April, with the Eurekahedge Japan Hedge Fund Index advancing 3.5%. The report showed similar gains with the Asia Ex-Japan index climbing 2.8%.
The Eurekahedge North American Hedge Fund Index added 1.5%, while the index tracking European hedge funds rose 1.4%. Managers of funds using so-called long-short equity strategies were the best performers because of gains in global stock markets.
Eurekahedge was launched by experienced members of the investment banking community for the hedge fund and investment community. The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index tracks the performance of 2,230 funds that invest globally.
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