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.
CNBC – Fortress Investment Group LLC has named former Fannie Mae CEO Daniel H. Mudd as its new CEO, effective Aug. 11.
Mudd, a Fortress board member, takes over for co-founder and majority shareholder Wesley Edens. Edens will remain with the alternative asset manager as co-chairman, a title he will share with Peter L. Briger.
Fortress said late Sunday that the personnel change will allow Edens, along with Briger, Michael Novogratz, Robert Kauffman and Randal Nardone, to concentrate on managing existing investments and finding new investment opportunities. The four executives will continue to own about 70 percent of the company.
Bloomberg – Marc Andreessen, who helped kick off the Internet boom 15 years ago by co-founding Netscape Communications Corp., is starting a $300 million venture capital fund to foster Silicon Valley startups.
Andreessen, 37, and partner Ben Horowitz, 43, will seek investment opportunities and spend between $50,000 and $50 million on each, Andreessen said in an interview. The fund will concentrate on things he knows, such as the Internet and information technology, rather “clean tech, biotech, electric cars and rocket ships,” he said.
HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – A survey by RSM McGladrey, a financial services consultancy, found that hedge fund managers are surprisingly ready to work with SEC regulators to cooperate with authority, despite wide-spread wariness about over-excessive regulation from the Obama administration.
However, the Obama financial regulatory plan was a top concern with 75%, fearing that further regulation will go too far and stifle the market’s recovery.
The survey polled more than 100 hedge fund managers during the last month and focused on hedge fund industry sentiment toward the Obama administration regulation.
Fund managers are also optimistic about the industry’s prospects, according to the survey. 60% believe the current environment provides more investment opportunities than challenges. An overwhelming majority (69%) see the U.S. economy returning to positive growth by Q2 2010.
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
BusinessWeek – Macquarie Capital Group and State Bank of India (SBI) plan to raise a new $2 billion fund that will invest in direct infrastructure investment opportunities in India.
Macquarie and SBI have signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a company and manage the proposed fund. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), as one of the fund’s cornerstone investors, will also have a stake in the proposed company.
Bloomberg – Distressed assets offer the best investment opportunities this year as the global recession deepens, billionaire hedge-fund manager John Paulson said.
“The decline in the market has created a very good buying opportunity,” Paulson, 53, whose New York-based Paulson & Co. oversees about $30 billion, said in a speech at a hedge-fund seminar hosted by Societe Generale and Lyxor Asset Management in Tokyo today. “Distressed opportunity in the U.S. is shaping up to be the best opportunity in a lifetime.”
Paulson said he’s focused on assets such as mortgages and debt from bankrupt companies, while in the equities markets he cited the utilities, consumer staples and pharmaceutical industries. Financial stocks remain risky, Paulson said.
In the 15 years since starting its first funds, Paulson & Co.’s one down year was 1998. All his funds were profitable in 2008, with the flagship fund returning about 38 percent, compared with a loss of 19 percent for hedge funds worldwide on average. The 2008 returns came after his funds made more than $3 billion for the firm in 2007 by anticipating the collapse of the U.S. housing market and subprime mortgages.
Investors are chasing distressed assets after more than $1.1 trillion in losses at financial firms globally and frozen credit markets helped drag the U.S., Europe and Japan into their first simultaneous recessions since World War II.
Reuters – GSO Capital Partners LP, Blackstone Group’s $25 billion credit hedge fund, is closing its Asia investment desk after failing to find attractive investments in the region, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.
The four-member team, led by Asia-Pacific head Timothy Donahue, will be relocated to either London or New York, the sources said, adding that GSO’s Asia fund raising team would remain in place.
The sources, who did not want to be identified because the information was not public, said GSO was shutting its Asia desk because there were better debt and credit investment opportunities in the United States and Europe.
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea will allow mutual savings firms and online-based companies to sell investment funds from next February, and draw up measures to cut sales fees for long-term investors, a regulator said on Sunday.
The Financial Services Commission FSC.L said in a statement that it will also tighten investor protection rules for fund sellers to teach customers risks from an investment, as well as its commissions and fees.
"South Korea’s fund sales market has been in the oligopolistic structure, which lacked competition for services and commissions between sellers," the statement said.
Currently, only banks, securities houses and insurance companies are authorised to sell investment funds which accounted for nearly 10 percent of the country’s household financial assets in 2007.
BusinessWeek – Some participants in South Korea’s nascent alternative-investment market have grown pessimistic over the ability of incoming legislation to support the development of an onshore hedge funds industry.
The Capital Markets Consolidation Act will become effective in February. It is a sweeping attempt to give Korea a securities law akin to those in the United Kingdom or Australia, in which financial services are regulated by function rather than by business license, and in which most types of businesses will be thrown open to all kinds of financial institutions. It will allow the development of a universal bank and plenty of cross-selling.
As part of this, the Financial Supervisory Service has been keen to encourage the development of an onshore hedge funds industry. There are a growing number of Korea-focused hedge funds, but nearly all of them operate offshore, in Singapore, Hong Kong or the United States. The government wants to position Seoul as a financial hub for northeast Asia, and has seen how hedge funds have become a vital and welcome part of the milieu in places like Singapore.
Telegraph.co.uk – A move by US and European central banks, as well as by central banks in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and South Korea, to slash borrowing costs has failed to reassure investors.
"It’s impossible to predict the bottom, and technical analysis is meaningless as panic and fear overwhelm the markets," said Jang Huh, at Prudential Asset Management in Seoul.
Japan’s Nikkei stock index fell 10pc, the biggest loss since “Black Monday” in October 1987 and it third biggest loss ever. The index, which closed down 881.06 points at 8,276.43, has lost more than 24pc over the past week.
Prime Minister Taro Aso warned that the slump could have real effects on Asia’s largest economy. The share price fall “has reached a point where it affects the real economy and fund raising,” he told reporters.
All indications are that European markets will open sharply lower.
BusinessWeek – Some participants in South Korea’s nascent alternative-investment market have grown pessimistic over the ability of incoming legislation to support the development of an onshore hedge funds industry.
The Capital Markets Consolidation Act will become effective in February. It is a sweeping attempt to give Korea a securities law akin to those in the United Kingdom or Australia, in which financial services are regulated by function rather than by business license, and in which most types of businesses will be thrown open to all kinds of financial institutions. It will allow the development of a universal bank and plenty of cross-selling.
As part of this, the Financial Supervisory Service has been keen to encourage the development of an onshore hedge funds industry. There are a growing number of Korea-focused hedge funds, but nearly all of them operate offshore, in Singapore, Hong Kong or the United States. The government wants to position Seoul as a financial hub for northeast Asia, and has seen how hedge funds have become a vital and welcome part of the milieu in places like Singapore.
The Consolidation Act makes no mention of hedge funds, however, and industry players have lobbied the Ministry of Strategy and Planning (what they call the Ministry of Economy and Finance these days) to address this. The government has responded by floating an amendment to the Consolidation Act that is expected to go before the National Assembly, probably in October. This amendment specifically addresses the ability of onshore fund managers to employ leverage.
Reuters – U.S. private equity house Lone Star is seriously considering suing the South Korean government if it delays approval beyond September of the firm’s $6.3 billion sale of shares in a local bank, a newspaper reported on Friday.
English language daily The Korea Times said Lone Star was mulling a suit claiming losses from the government for delaying the sale of shares in Korea Exchange Bank.
Lone Star’s PR agency in Seoul declined to comment and a lawyer representing Lone Star was not available for immediate comment.
Last September, Lone Star LS.UL agreed to sell its 51 percent stake in KEB the country’s No. 6 lender, to UK-based HSBC for $6.3 billion.
But HSBC’s offer lapsed on July 31, with the government delaying approval of the KEB sale, citing legal uncertainties relating to Lone Star’s South Korean activities. The deal is still awaiting regulatory approval.
"Beleaguered with growing complaints from investors, Lone Star is considering returning its KEB shares in-kind to investors as one possible option, together with a block sale option," the Korea Times cited an unnamed source close to the deal as saying.
Reuters – HSBC Holdings on Thursday denied a South Korean media report saying it had agreed with U.S. private equity firm Lone Star to set a new deadline for a $6.3 billion deal for control of Korea Exchange Bank.
"We have not created a deadline," HSBC spokesman David Hall said.
"Our original position stands, in that either side has the option to walk away, but we made it clear we are interested in continuing this deal."
Online news outlet EDaily, citing financial industry sources, reported that the two sides had agreed to maintain the deal, which was supposed to be wrapped up by July 31, until the end of September.
Lone Star’s PR agency in Seoul said there had been no announcement on an extension to the deal, declining to comment further. A KEB spokesman said he was not aware of any developments.
