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.
Bloomberg – Man Group Plc, the largest publicly traded hedge-fund manager, rose as much as 4.5 percent in London trading after redemptions by institutional investors slowed.
Pension plans, endowments and money managers pulled $1.8 billion on July 1, half the $3.6 billion of redemptions three months earlier, London-based Man Group said in a statement today. The stock was up 1.7 percent at 243.25 pence as of 9:05 a.m.
Wealth Bulletin – Paul Myners has vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to revise a directive from Brussels that would give the European Union the power to set limits on how much hedge funds are allowed to borrow.
The draft legislation has triggered panic in the industry and prompted several senior figures to threaten to leave London unless the legislation is radically altered.
Myners will meet Sweden’s deputy finance minister in 10 days to seek changes to the directive, as Sweden prepares to take over the EU chair from Czech Republic on July 1.
Bloomberg – Dwight Anderson, the commodities investor who liquidated his main Ospraie Fund last year after losing 39 percent, is planning a comeback with two new hedge funds set to open July 1.
The Ospraie Equity Fund will buy and sell stocks of commodity and basic-materials companies in industries such as chemicals, mining, paper and natural resources, Anderson said in a May 12 letter to investors. The Ospraie Commodity Fund will invest in commodities and related derivatives, according to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News.
Dallas Morning News – An Amarillo charitable foundation is suing Dallas-based Highland Capital Management LP to recover more than $1.8 million from a Highland hedge fund that was shut down in October after heavy losses.
The Mary E. Bivins Foundation, which focuses on helping the elderly, had asked to withdraw its investment from a fund called Highland Credit Strategies in March.
Highland agreed to return more than $1.9 million as of July 1 but said it would pay the money back over nine months, the foundation said in a lawsuit filed last month in Amarillo. It has given back only $80,000 so far, the lawsuit said.
Hemscott – UK-based fund firm Augustus Asset Managers said on Tuesday assets under management in its fixed income and currency macro hedge fund have bucked market trends and doubled in the year to end-October.
Augustus, formed from the management buyout of Julius Baer Investments, said assets at the JB Global Rates Hedge Fund have grown to $308.8 million in the year to end-October, up from $134.8 million.
During the period the fund, which takes directional bets in fixed income and currency, has returned 13.56 percent.
Augustus has assets under management of about $12 billion in long-only, absolute return and hedge funds.
Reuters – Emerging stocks and bonds slid in a panic sell-off on Wednesday as hedge funds dashed to unwind positions, but Hungary’s central bank tried to throttle a slide in its currency with a three-percentage point rate rise.
The banking crisis that started in developed markets is leading to steep falls in emerging markets, as investors are forced to retrench, analysts and traders say.
"There is a need for hedge funds to withdraw from emerging markets to cover redemptions that are occurring, it is a reversal of the carry trade that is being unwound at a very rapid rate," said Neil Dougall, chief emerging markets economist at Dresdner Kleinwort.
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.
Reuters- Melissa Ko, a former star trader at Bear Stearns, has formed a new hedge fund called Covepoint Capital with nearly $1 billion in assets, according to a letter the firm sent to investors on Monday.
Ko ran Bear’s Emerging Markets Macro Fund, which generated returns of more than 25 percent from 2005 to 2007 through currency, sovereign debt, equity and other investing strategies. New York-based Covepoint has assets of about $925 million, mainly from previous investors in the Bear fund.
Covepoint is the latest hedge fund to become independent from the former Bear Stearns Asset Management (BSAM) division, a collection of funds which held about $27 billion in assets when JPMorgan Chase & Co bought the crippled investment bank on May 30.
