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This is London – It also led many in the City to believe the Bank favours a weak currency, prompting a series of downbeat forecasts today. “I’m super bearish on the pound,” said Hans-Guenter Redeker, the London-based head of foreign exchange at BNP Paribas.
“The Bank of England has made it clear it can’t afford a stronger currency.” He forecast the pound would fall to $1.50 in 12 months.
John Taylor, chief executive of New York hedge fund FX Concepts, said sterling will “get crushed” and sink as low as $1.45 in the coming months.
“The fundamentals in the UK are certainly not pretty,” he said. “It’s a race for the least ugly of the candidates, and I would argue that the US is going to be the least ugly for a while.” Others were more upbeat and said the measures taken by the Bank and the Government to ease the slowdown will boost sterling. HSBC predicted the pound would rise to $1.75 by the end of next year — midway between the high of $2.12 in November 2007 and the low of $1.38 in March this year.
Seekingalpha.com - Moore, named after Bacon’s middle name, is a $10 billion global macro set of hedge funds. The next few funds we will be covering are global macro oriented funds, which is a switch from some of the more value oriented funds we’ve been covering, like the ‘Tiger Cub’ funds including Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital, John Griffin’s Blue Ridge Capital, and Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global.
Global macro funds seek to find investments in whatever market they can gain an edge, whether it be equities, bonds, currencies, debt, commodities, and more. So, keep in mind that these equity positions only represent a portion of the fund’s overall holdings. They are not required to disclose holdings outside of equities, notes, and stock options.
Bloomberg – Switzerland’s asset managers and private bankers haven’t drawn much mirth from investing this year, making the timing of the “Art of Money” show in Lugano ironic.
The exhibition by New York-based artist Jenna Lash features a dozen brightly colored images based on currencies, some so familiar they’re taken for granted, and others extinct. Works on display feature pensive soldiers from the Lithuanian litas, a haunting Mahatma Gandhi from an Indian rupee, and a red, white and blue George Washington imitating the U.S. dollar.
“To finish a year that will go down as the ‘annus horribilis’ for money with a collection like this has beautiful irony,” said Klaus Muhlhausser, a German artist whose studio in a former typography factory a few blocks off Lake Lugano hosts the show through Dec. 13. “I’m one of the few people in Lugano not in the financial business, and this seemed a fun way to participate.”
Bloomberg – Tudor Investment Corp., the firm run by Paul Tudor Jones, temporarily suspended redemptions from the $10 billion BVI Global Fund Ltd. as it splits the hedge fund into two, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Tudor is planning to put hard-to-sell investments, mostly corporate bonds and loans from emerging markets, into a new fund called Legacy, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. BVI Global, which started in 1986, would focus on easier-to-trade stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies.
More than 80 firms have liquidated funds, restricted redemptions or segregated assets following stock-market declines and a credit freeze that started with rising defaults on U.S. subprime mortgages. Emerging-markets securities have fallen as commodity prices plunged and investors shunned riskier assets on concern the global economy is entering a recession. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index has dropped 58 percent this year.
Chicago Tribune – The credit crunch and global economic recession have squeezed many independent filmmakers, who were already struggling from a glut of films and a shortage of funds even before the global economy went into a tailspin last month.
While the major studios have long-term deals in place to co-finance their movies, independent producers aren’t nearly as fortunate. Most of them do not have easy access to capital and instead must cobble together a patchwork of financing to make one film at a time. That patchwork has become frayed as lenders cool on making loans to filmmakers and foreign buyers grapple with access to credit and depressed currencies.
"The entire ability of independent filmmakers to finance their films has been shaken dramatically," said Mark Damon, chief executive of Foresight Unlimited, a Los Angeles film production company, who produced the 2003 drama "Monster."
Reuters Tokyo – The yen dipped against higher-yielding currencies on Monday while the Australian dollar surged as leaders from Europe to the United States rushed out plans to shore up banks and stem the panic gripping investors.
After many stock markets suffered their worst weekly losses ever last week, leaders from Group of Seven industrialised nations set out a plan of action.
European officials offered to guarantee some bank debt and inject public funds into individual banks if necessary.
The United States said it would take stakes in banks in a first such move since the Great Depression, Australia guaranteed bank deposits and Britain was set to pump more than 40 billion pounds into its four biggest banks.
The flurry of initiatives to contain the worst financial crisis since the 1930s increased investor appetite for risk, though analysts were uncertain whether the improving mood would last very long.
Washington Post – Central banks in the United States, Europe and Japan will consider taking foreign-denominated assets as collateral in an effort to provide liquidity for battered financial markets, the Nikkei newspaper said on Sunday.
Currently most central banks only accept assets denominated in their home currency as collateral, the paper said. If central banks were to accept assets denominated in other currencies, cash-strapped firms would be able to get funds easier, it said.
Six central banks, including the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of England are discussing a potential rule change, the Nikkei said.
The paper did not quote any sources and no one was immediately available at the Bank of Japan for comment, however BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said earlier this week the move was under consideration.
Globes – Priority Investments Ltd.’s Israeli hedge fund index, Hedge Fund Priority Index (HFPI) fell 0.85% in July, compared with a 4.66% drop by its benchmark, the Tel Aviv 25 Index. However, the Hedge Fund Research Inc. (HFRI) fund weighted composite index fell 2.17% compared with a 0.98% drop by the S&P 500 Index.
During the first half of July, high oil prices continued to trouble the US economy, and weighed down financial stocks, which weakened the dollar against other currencies. The US government bailout of Fannie Mae (NYSE: FNY) and Freddie Mac (NYSE: FRE), plus the restrictions placed on short sellers, contributed to gains in the second half of the month.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Fortress Investment Group, who oversees more than $18 billion in assets, is starting a new hedge fund that will invest in markets throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
The new fund, Fortress MENA, is set to launch near the end of September and seeks returns of 20 percent annually, according to insider documents obtained by Bloomberg. Headed by Philippe Peres, who has run the company’s Drawbridge Global Macro funds for the past five years, the fund will use a “significant” amount of its employee’s personal capital to launch. The documents did not state how much money the fund aimed to raise up front.
Fortress MENA will deal with equities, fixed-income securities and currencies throughout regions seeking to reduce their oil dependencies. This includes countries such as Lebanon, Qatar, Pakistan and Turkey.
This will be the fifth hedge fund in the company’s portfolio. Fortress went public in February, but has seen shares decrease 36 percent this year compared to the 13 percent decline of the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. Shares are trading almost 50 percent below their initial offering of $18.50.
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Bloomberg – Citadel Investment Group LLC, the Chicago-based asset-management firm founded by Kenneth Griffin, is seeking about $1 billion for a new global macro hedge fund, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The fund is set to be managed in London by Kaveh Alamouti, 54, whom Citadel hired this year from New York-based Moore Capital Management LLC, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. Citadel oversees $20 billion.
Macro funds, which attempt to profit from broad economic trends by trading stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities, gained an average of 3.7 percent this year through July, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. All funds lost an average of 3.4 percent.
"Citadel is as good as they get,” said Tammer Kamel, president of Toronto-based Iluka Consulting Group Ltd., which advises clients on investing in hedge funds. “They have a reputation that will ease the current difficulties that hedge funds face in raising capital.”
Bloomberg – Dow Kim, the former head of trading and investment banking at Merrill Lynch & Co., dropped plans to start a hedge fund after investors backed out, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Kim had been in discussions with institutions that had agreed to invest about $1 billion combined in his Diamond Lake Investment Group LP, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The New York-based firm had hired 30 people based on the commitments.
The evaporation of credit and declines surpassing 20 percent in some stock markets caused the initial investors to change their minds, said the people. Kim had planned a multistrategy hedge fund that would trade everything from equities to bonds to currencies.
Forbes – The dollar edged up towards a one-month high against the euro on Friday before monthly U.S. jobs data later in the day, with investors viewing the report as a key hurdle for whether the U.S. currency can sustain its rebound.
A mixed bag of U.S. data released the previous day showing the economy expanding less than expected in the second quarter, a spike in jobless claims but a pick-up in Midwest business activity did not prove decisive for the dollar. [ID:nN31399964]
Investors are still looking for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates later in the year, just as mounting signs of economic slowdown from the euro zone to Australia have started to take a toll on other major currencies.
