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.
Baltimore Business Journal – Former Aether Systems CEO David Oros has launched a $3 million hedge fund called Global Domain Vector Fund LLC, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Oros is managing director and chief administrative officer of Baltimore’s Global Domain Partners LLC. He is joined by Jonathan Caplis, a director at Global Domain, as a managing member of the hedge fund, the filing says.
The fund was incorporated in 2005 and its first sale took place April 1, according to the Aug. 19 filing. It is accepting a minimum of $500,000 from outside investors.
New York Times – Russell Herman, the chief executive of the hedge fund firm Dawson-Herman Capital Management, is the latest manager to shutter his fund after heavy losses last year and differences with the firm’s founder, Jonathan Dawson.
Mr. Herman told clients in a letter last week that he was shutting the Southport Millennium Funds and returning capital to investors. The move was first reported by Dealbreaker.com on Friday. The firm currently has about $902 million of capital under management after reaching a height of $3.2 billion at the beginning of 2008.
Like many in the hedge fund industry, Dawson-Herman suffered big losses last year. The main Southport fund was down more than 35 percent and has failed to make up for the losses this year. “We have not been able to build the portfolios with high conviction ideas and themes to the degree that is satisfactory to me and in line with our historical standards,” Mr. Herman said in the letter.
Law.com – Marc S. Dreier on Wednesday sent a confessional letter to the federal judge who will sentence him on Monday (pdf), describing in remarkable detail how he funded the once-admired expansion of Dreier LLP by committing frauds totaling more than $400 million.
Facing a recommendation from the government that he serve the rest of his life in prison but pleading for a measured sentence, Dreier, 59, said his seven-year downward spiral began with a simple theft from a client settlement fund and ended at the point where "I found myself running a massive Ponzi scheme with no apparent way out."
Dreier’s letter was submitted as defense attorney Gerald L. Shargel and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan R. Streeter sent competing memos to Southern District of New York Judge Jed S. Rakoff taking a dramatically different view of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines.
Evening Standard – Control of the fund was wrested from Horlick supporters by its largest shareholder Vincent Tchenguiz after a tight shareholder vote last week.
Tchenguiz installed a new board with the brief to wind up the fund to create as much value for shareholders as possible.
Horlick will meet the new chairman Jonathan Carr this week and is expected to be told she is being axed as the fund’s manager.
That could lead to her claiming as much as £8 million as a termination fee although Carr is likely to challenge that figure.
Reuters – Hedge fund managers, administrators and investors have gathered in Monaco for the annual GAIM industry conference following a tough year marked by poor performance and client outflows.
Below are selected quotes from the first day of the conference:
JONATHAN FEENEY, INVESTCORP INVESTMENT ADVISORS:
"In the last five years or so … everything was flying and no one cared about risk management. It’s only when problems arise that it suddenly becomes a focus, and then it’s too late.
"With a new manager, it’s horrible to say this, but it’s got to the stage now where you want to check the office exists. It’s the paranoia now post-Madoff."
This is London – She bought the property close to the top of the market following the break-up of her relationship with hedge-fund multi-millionaire and philanthropist Arpad "Arki" Busson, the father of her two children Arpad Flynn, 11, and Aurelius Cy, six. He now lives with actress Uma Thurman.
Two years ago Ms Macpherson – born Eleanor Nancy Gow – ordered a major interior redesign to create more bathrooms and living space and restored many original features.
She also commissioned celebrity interior designer Jonathan Reed – who has worked for David Bowie and model Claudia Schiffer – to give the six-bedroom house a contemporary minimalist feel.
GlobeSt.com – Locally based direct private lender Silo Financial Corp. has formed an alliance with a New York City-based private equity fund to concentrate on non-performing loans, says Silo founder Jonathan Daniel. The fund has earmarked $100 million "for opportunistic real estate lending, acquiring non-performing loans, lending against nonperforming loans and potentially even doing some strategic preferred equity," Daniel tells GlobeSt.com.
The time is ripe for such a venture, in the view of Daniel and the founders of KPO Ventures, two former partners at multi-billion-dollar hedge funds. "Obviously, the current environment is very conducive for private lending, due to the fact that there’s no capital out there," says Daniel.
Reuters – Hedge fund firm Cheyne Capital Management is to buy fund of hedge funds manager Altedge Capital, the firms said on Tuesday, as the once-booming industry consolidates in the face of client outflows. Under the deal, Altedge Chief Executive and Chief Investment Officer Chris Goekjian will become partner and chief investment officer at Cheyne, which manages more than $6 billion in assets, and will report to Chief Executive Jonathan Lourie.
Altedge, whose business will be integrated into Cheyne’s over the next six months, hopes to benefit from Cheyne’s distribution.
The Associated Press – A Silicon Valley hedge fund manager wanted in the U.S. on charges he duped investors out of at least $5 million challenged his extradition from Hong Kong on Wednesday.
Fund manager Albert Hu, an American citizen, told a Hong Kong court through his lawyer that he wanted to exercise his right to see evidence in his case, in which U.S. officials are seeking his extradition to California.
"He feels that he must seek evidence (from) the prosecution," said defense counsel Jonathan Acton-Bond.
Hu had indicated he was willing to surrender to the U.S. during his first court appearance last week, according to Hong Kong’s Department of Justice.
Bloomberg - Marc Dreier, the New York lawyer accused of cheating hedge funds, said he told his 19-year-old son he could have properties worth $12.5 million after the teenager agreed to spend the summer with him, prosecutors said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Streeter in New York made the disclosure yesterday in a letter urging a federal judge to deny bail to Dreier, who is accused of defrauding investors of hundreds of millions of dollars. Streeter said statements made by Dreier to the receiver of his law firm, Dreier LLP, aren’t “credible” and that Dreier may have assets hidden overseas.
Dreier, 58, was arrested Dec. 7 on charges that he persuaded two unidentified hedge funds to give him more than $100 million by falsely claiming he was selling at a discount notes issued by Sheldon Solow, a New York developer. Prosecutors later said “very sophisticated investors” lost $380 million. In yesterday’s letter, they said the loss topped $400 million.
Bloomberg- Service Corp. International, the biggest U.S. funeral-home and cemetery owner, is becoming a magnet for hedge funds which see the rising death rate among Baby Boomers as the surest way to resurrect the company’s shares.
Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors LLC added almost 2 million shares in the first quarter to increase its stake to 2.2 percent, according to regulatory filings. AQR Capital Management LLC, run by Cliff Asness, also boosted holdings in Service Corp.
“There is a demographic benefit as the Baby Boom ages and the death rate rises,” said Dana Walker, a portfolio manager at Kalmar Investments Inc., which oversees $3 billion in Greenville, Delaware. “The flow-through, in a top-line and a bottom-line sense, ought to be very generous.” Kalmar owned 1.2 percent of Houston-based Service Corp. as of March 31.
After at least four decades of declines, the U.S. death rate will rise to 9.3 per thousand people in 2020 and 10.9 per thousand in 2040, according to projections from the National Funeral Directors Association in Brookfield, Wisconsin.
