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 Lawyer – Offshore giant Appleby is to merge with Isle of Man firm Dickinson Cruickshank to create the world’s largest offshore firm in terms of partner numbers.
The combined firm will have 73 partners and nine offices worldwide, including in Dubai and Zurich, where Appleby opened last year.
It is the first major offshore merger since Appleby first moved into the Channel Islands by combining with Jersey-based firm Bailhache Labesse in June 2006.
Indopia – Britain’s leading entrepreneurs are considering to leave the country as a mark of protest against UK Chancellor Alistair Darling’s new 50 per cent tax rate, a media report says.
" Hugh Osmond, the pubs to insurance entrepreneur, is thinking about a move to Switzerland. Peter Hargreaves, the 10 million-pound-a-year co-founder of Hargreaves Lansdown, the financial adviser, is looking at the Isle of Man or Monaco," the Sunday Times said adding," More are likely to follow."
As per the latest budget, from next year anyone earning more than 150,000 pounds a year will have to pay 50 per cent as income tax. The move replaced the 45 per cent tax bracket threatened in the pre-budget report last November.
Businessmen have warned that raising taxes on the rich would do nothing to boost the exchequer, as the wealthy can always find ways to avoid it.
Bloomberg – Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC will invest as much as $500 million in projects that bury greenhouse gases blamed for global warming and create tradable emissions credits.
Och-Ziff, the hedge-fund firm run by Daniel Och, also bought 10 percent of the emission credit company Blue Source LLC, chief executive officer Bill Townsend said. Townsend wouldn’t disclose the value of the deal, which closed Aug. 14.
Emissions credits from projects that reduce global warming gases are voluntarily traded in the U.S. by companies and others seeking to enhance their environmental image. Congress is debating legislation that would mandate reductions in greenhouse gases and create a market for emissions credits that utilities and large manufacturers would need to meet pollution targets.
“To us, it’s pretty dramatic,” Townsend said in an interview yesterday. “We think that this will probably fund us for the next three years of investments.”
Bloomberg – Dai-ichi Mutual Life Insurance Co., with more than 30 trillion yen ($274 billion) in assets, will invest more money with hedge funds to safeguard returns as financial markets falter.
Tokyo-based Dai-ichi Mutual, Japan’s second-largest life insurer, currently invests in more than 100 hedge funds as well as funds of hedge funds, Yuji Hirai, manager of the firm’s structured and alternative investment department, said in an interview in Tokyo yesterday. He declined to provide specific targets for hedge fund allocations.
“Our goal is to increase our allocation to hedge funds,” said Hirai, 40. “We’re in a difficult market, no doubt, but for hedge funds chasing absolute returns, this is the time to prove their outperformance.”
