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.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Investment management company Legg Mason Inc. has launched a global multi-asset tactical allocation mutual fund named Legg Mason Permal Tactical Allocation Fund. The fund, which targets institutional and retail taxable and tax-exempt investors, will be managed by Legg Mason’s fund-of-hedge-funds affiliate, Permal Asset Management.
Legg Mason said that the fund is an opportunistic and diversified product, which seeks to benefit from any market condition and to outperform a traditional 60/30/10 (equity/fixed income/cash) portfolio over a medium-term time frame.
"Permal has an expertise in asset allocation and a deep global perspective and we believe they can find opportunities in these markets to deliver value to our clients." Matt Schiffman, Head of Americas Retail at Legg Mason said, "This is an innovative way to bring their fund of hedge fund expertise to traditional asset classes in a mutual fund offering."
The asset allocation strategy is designed to exploit perceived inefficiencies or imbalances in equity, fixed-income or other asset classes in any region or country, said the Baltimore, Maryland-based mutual fund group.
The fund will invest primarily in both passive and actively managed investment funds, to include specifically, affiliated and unaffiliated open-end mutual funds, unaffiliated closed-end mutual funds and exchange traded funds and notes, as well as cash equivalents and alternative investments.
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net)- A Swiss Bank has picked up on a hedge fund platform, Orc Trading, to replace key technology for its electronic trading operations. The order was booked in Q1 2008.
"We have thoroughly evaluated several trading systems providers and chose to go with Orc Trading for its combination of speed and stability," said Thomas Kurzen, Head Trading Technology at InCore Bank AG. "We also appreciate the high quality of Orc’s supporting organization and the great potential for growth offered by Orc’s open architecture.
While the new trading solution is initially intended for proprietary trading only, the Swiss bank plans to add new functionality, such as Orc Broker for its sales desk operations. Other future opportunities investigated by the bank include using extended connectivity for incoming and outgoing order flow with access to multiple international markets, as offered by the Orc Connect framework.
Orc Software is a provider of solutions for the financial industry in the areas of advanced derivatives trading and low latency connectivity. Orc’s customers include leading investment banks, trading and market-making firms, exchanges, brokerage houses, institutional investors and hedge funds. Orc Software is next exhibiting at Screen Events in Amsterdam, September 25.
InCore Bank AG is the first independent Swiss corporation with a banking and securities dealer license and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Maerki Baumann Holding AG.
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
FRANKFURT (Reuters)- UBS has wrapped up a 16 billion franc rights issue, the Swiss bank’s second effort to resuscitate finances that have been ravaged by the global markets crisis.
It is the latest in a line of major banks including Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS and France’s Credit Agricole to go cap in hand to shareholders. In total, European banks are raising more than $40 billion from shell-shocked investors.
UBS said on Friday 99.4 percent of the issue was taken up but one analyst pointed to what he said was UBS’s weak stock performance during the rights trading. "It has been weak ever since they announced the rights issue," said Peter Thorne, an analyst with Helvea.
Bloomberg – The annual shareholders meeting of UBS AG used to be a time for Chairman Marcel Ospel to gloat over his accomplishments. Shareholders would praise Ospel for turning a slow-growing, insular Swiss bank into a global financial powerhouse, with a stock price that rose 115 percent from January 1999 to January 2007. Just last year, Ospel bragged to shareholders about how the bank’s record profit was the result of its “smart expansion strategy.”
At UBS’s most recent annual meeting in April, shareholders cheered Ospel again. This time, though, it was when he announced his resignation. Ospel, 58, wearing a navy blue suit and bright yellow tie, didn’t flinch. Glasses resting on the end of his nose, he made a lengthy speech comparing himself to the captain of a ship emerging from a storm.
Shareholders responded that it was the chairman himself who had steered the bank into choppy waters. “Ospel is responsible for this malaise,” Gerhard Meier, a shareholder for 30 years, told investors at the meeting. In the nine months ended on March 31, UBS lost 25.4 billion Swiss francs ($24.3 billion), more than any other bank caught in the worldwide credit crunch.
Shareholders say Ospel and his fellow managers took a profitable Swiss bank and wrecked it on the shoals of structured finance and subprime mortgages.
“He built up enormous risks, which were damaging the whole organization,” says Herbert Braendli, president of Profond, a Swiss pension fund that has been selling down its holding of about 2.3 million UBS shares because it’s unhappy with the bank’s management. “He intentionally pushed it with his expansion goals.”
