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.
StarTribune – The money trail in a suspect currency investment program promoted by several Twin Cities companies runs through an industrial building in this gritty southern California community that calls itself Horsetown USA.
Trevor Cook, a 37-year-old Minneapolis money manager at the center of a sweeping federal investigation, wired millions of dollars over the past year to a lawyer here, Gary Saunders, to buy land for a Panama casino and condominiums, according to sources familiar with the transfers.
Blogging Stocks – One year ago today, a quarter ended that put hundreds of bullish hedge funds out of business. Today, a quarter ends that will put hundreds of bearish hedge funds out of business.
Oh, sure, last year some of the bulls were able to stumble through the fourth quarter, but October was a horror show and they ended up getting huge redemption letters and spending the rest of 2008 selling into the strength of the rally to return capital to investors and lock in losses.
Zawya – Shareholders at InvestcorpInvestcorp’s Extraordinary General Assembly today voted to issue a further US$ 40 million of preference shares to meet additional demand from investors who subscribed to Investcorp’s recent capital raise.
Investcorp had received commitments in excess of the $500m of shares that could be issued under the Firm’s current Memorandum of Association. An amendment approved by the shareholders today will enable Investcorp to issue additional preferences shares to cover this oversubscription.
Total Telecom – Twitter Inc., the latest Silicon Valley start-up to stir up investor excitement based on lofty expectations and an unformed business model, has a new backer that’s been a relative stranger to venture capital in recent years: T. Rowe Price Group Inc.
Twitter disclosed its new funding round on Friday, in a brief message posted on a company Web site. Evan Williams, a co-founder of the Internet microblogging service, confirmed that in addition to T. Rowe Price, other investors in the round include Insight Venture Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and other venture capital firms.
Tehran Times – One of London’s top traders is launching a $500m (£307m) hedge fund in a move that signals the industry could be about to make a comeback following a disastrous year of losses in 2008.
Tony Chedraoui, who used to run the The Deephaven European Event Fund, has started up Tyrus Capital, a global hedge fund that will focus on trading events, such as merger deals.
Mr. Chedraoui is expected to attract strong interest from backers and investors, said investment advisers. This is because the Deephaven European Event Fund, which last year won the EuroHedge award for best performance in 2008, managed to weather the financial crisis to rise by around 17.31 percent. The average event-driven fund was down 14.91 percent in 2008, according to the HSBC index. According to well-placed sources, Mr. Chedraoui has already employed 14 former colleagues from the Deephaven European Event Fund and hopes to start actively trading later in the year.
Canada.com – Holding a hedge fund conference at a casino may not be the best optics for an industry that was cast as one of the free-wheeling gamblers of the financial crisis, but players in the fledgling Canadian sector meeting in Niagara Falls this week have plenty of other things to focus on.
With investors demanding more disclosure about risk and liquidity exposure, it comes as no surprise that transparency is on the tip of everyone’s tongues at the World Alternative Investment Summit Canada at the Fallsview Casino Resort.
“Transparency is a big thing here in Canada,” Tom Hockin, chairman of the Expert Panel on Securities Regulation, told delegates to the summit, which ends Wednesday.
CNBC – A year after the fall of Lehman Brothers, Capital Gold Group, Inc. is still helping retirees and investors to diversify and protect what is left of their investment funds and retirement portfolios in tangible gold assets.
During the weekend of Sept. 13, 2008, as the two dozen most powerful bankers in the world were gathered together in an effort to save Lehman Brothers Holdings, Inc. by Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and then Federal Reserve Bank of New York President Timothy F. Geithner, they were not aware of the financial tsunami that allowing Lehman to fail would create.
News Inferno – One hedge fund has agreed to reimburse its investors who were swindled in the historic Ponzi scheme orchestrated by the disgraced, now jailed, financier, Bernard Madoff. The hedge fund—Fairfield Greenwich Advisors—apparently moved money to Madoff, said Boston.com, and will now reimburse its Massachusetts investors for some $8 million to cover losses. The agreement was reached Wednesday with Secretary of State William F. Galvin, said Boston.com,
Galvin, said Fairfield Greenwich, did not conduct the “rigorous” due diligence of Madoff it told its investors in Massachusetts it had, reported Boston.com. Galvin hopes that this agreement “will become a template for other resolutions’’ in the massive Ponzi scandal, quoted Boston.com.
Hartford Courant – A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by a man convicted of running a hedge fund scam in Connecticut who claimed New York University owed him a diploma.
Hakan Yalincak (yal-in-SACK’), an NYU undergraduate, was sentenced in 2007 to 3 1/2 years in prison for persuading investors to pour millions into a nonexistent Greenwich-based hedge fund.
His lawsuit against NYU seeks to have F’s in biology and algebra raised to passing grades so he’ll have enough credits to graduate.
Reuters – Cerberus Capital Management CBS.UL said on Wednesday it will prohibit investors in new hedge funds from withdrawing money for three years.
Earlier on Wednesday, the Financial Times reported Cerberus planned to bar withdrawals in two new funds to prevent the outflows that followed its loss-making acquisitions of carmaker Chrysler and financial services company GMAC.
“The three-year lock-up period will apply to all new hedge funds,” Timothy Price, managing director and spokesman for Cerberus, said in a statement to Reuters.
Forbes – A court-appointed receiver in the case of a Sarasota man accused of bilking investors of up to $350 million is suing the firm that represented the hedge funds for failing to protect investors.
A lawsuit filed Monday says Holland & Knight failed to discover Arthur Nadel’s fraudulent investment program, even though a cursory examination would have revealed his illegal activities.
Nadel disappeared for two weeks in January after leaving his family a note in which he threatened to kill himself. He has been charged with federal securities and wire fraud and is being held on $5 million bail.
Forbes – Polygon’s Reade Griffith is a poster child for what’s wrong with the hedge fund industry these days.
A year ago, Griffith, heading into a disastrous year where he wound up losing 48%, gated investors, barring them from yanking out their money. Now he is getting the word out that he is trying to raise money for two new hedge funds, a Convertible Opportunity Fund and the European Equity Opportunity Fund. The funds, Griffith said in a recent letter to investors, have been launched with partner and employee capital.
