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.
Reuters – Electricite de France SA is close to an agreement to buy half the nuclear power business of Constellation Energy Group Inc (CEG.N) for $4.5 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the situation.
Approval by Constellation‘s board, subject to some conditions, may be announced as early as this week, Bloomberg said quoting a source who remained anonymous because the talks are private.
In September, Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s (BRKa.N) (BRKb.N) unit MidAmerican Energy Holdings agreed to pay $4.7 billion, or $26.50 a share, for U.S. power company Constellation, which was on the brink of bankruptcy.
Telegraph.com.UK – Sources close to Mrs Lagarde said that she had called the US Treasury Secretary – a close personal friend – well before the ailing bank’s collapse imploring him to act, but he chose not to.
Lehman Brothers’ demise sparked the biggest shake-up on Wall Street in decades and sent shock waves around the world that triggered a massive bailout plan in Britain and Europe.
Mrs Lagarde – attributed with playing a key role in brokering a bailout deal among G7 finance ministers in Washington last weekend – dubbed Mr Paulson’s decision to let the bank go under "horrendous" as it triggered panic in markets and banks to the brink of a 1929-style financial meltdown.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, she warned that the world’s hedge funds could be the next institutions to be hit by the financial turmoil.
Portsmouth Herald News – The Federal Reserve resisted a cut in interest rates Tuesday and then forged a plan to take over American International Group Inc. and rescue the insurance giant from the brink of bankruptcy with an extraordinary $85 billion loan.
The moves, along with a slight rebound on Wall Street, offered some respite after the chaos that shook the financial system Monday when investment house Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and the Dow Jones industrials suffered its biggest point drop since the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Investors worried that a failure by AIG, the world’s largest insurer, would set off even more financial turmoil.
The Federal Reserve said in a statement it determined that a disorderly failure of AIG could hurt the already delicate financial markets and the economy.
It also could "lead to substantially higher borrowing costs, reduced household wealth and materially weaker economic performance," the Fed said.
"The president supports the agreement announced this evening by the Federal Reserve," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "These steps are taken in the interest of promoting stability in financial markets and limiting damage to the broader economy."
Independent- The man who made a personal $3.7bn (£1.85bn) fortune by predicting the credit crisis is hoping to make another killing by helping to prop up financial companies brought to the brink of ruin by the chaos in the debt markets.
John Paulson, who went from being an obscure Manhattan hedge fund manager to one of the financial world’s hottest properties last year, is raising a new fund that will invest in banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions as they rebuild their battered balance sheets.
Financial companies have written off more than $460bn since the collapse in the debt markets began last summer, and Mr Paulson believes that is barely one-third of the final total that will be lost. At a conference in Monaco last month, he said writedowns could ultimately reach $1.3 trillion.
Bloomberg – Hedge funds turned in their worst first-half performance in almost two decades as the collapse of subprime-mortgage bonds and rising commodity prices pushed stocks to the brink of a bear market.
Hedge funds declined by an average 0.7 percent in June, bringing the year-to-date loss to 0.75 percent, data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. show. It’s the worst start to a year since the Chicago-based firm began tracking returns in 1990. The $1.9 trillion industry has posted one losing year, in 2002, when funds fell 1.45 percent amid the 23 percent decline by the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
Managers attracted a net $16.5 billion during the first three months of the year, down from $30.4 billion in the fourth quarter, Hedge Fund Research reported. Investors have become less tolerant of losses and are shifting assets to traders who have shown they can thrive in turbulent markets, said Antonio Munoz, who runs EIM Management USA in New York, which farms out $15 billion to hedge funds.
“We don’t see investors pulling the plug across the board and putting their capital into cash,” Munoz said.
Financial Times – Jimmy Cayne apologised for the first time to Bear Stearns shareholders and employees on Thursday as the investment bank he helped build into a scrappy powerhouse formally disappeared into Wall Street history as the biggest victim of the credit crisis.
Mr Cayne’s comments, made before a packed auditorium at Bear headquarters, came as shareholders approved the sale of the bank to JPMorgan Chase for $10 a share, or $2.2bn. Bear traded above $150 a share as recently as a year ago.
“I just want to personally apologise for what has happened,” Mr Cayne, 74, said at a meeting that lasted less than 10 minutes. “We just ran into our own hurricane.”
He was referring to a crisis of confidence that slammed Bear in March, leading clients to flee and lenders to pull the overnight funding on which the bank had become so dependent.
The crisis pushed Bear to the brink of bankruptcy before the Federal Reserve and other regulators stepped in to help broker the sale to JPMorgan for an initial price of $2 per share. JPMorgan later lifted the offer to $10 after an outcry from Bear shareholders.
Bear employees and shareholders on Thursday were not sympathetic to the run-on-the-bank argument, contending that the company could have moved sooner to raise capital and reduce its reliance on borrowed money.
“This did not need to happen and a lot of people lost all they had,” said one Bear trader, smoking a cigarette on the street after the meeting ended.
The trader, who declined to give his name, said he was happy to still have his job even as JPMorgan cuts the vast bulk of Bear‘s former workforce of 14,000. “Maybe they will come in here and really clean this place up,” he said.
