CNNMoney.com - For equity markets, 2008 will long be remembered as a year of massive selling, and it’s likely to end the same way.
Hedge funds will find it increasingly difficult to obtain lending at the end of the year, a time when banks typically tighten their lending anyway as part of the "window […]

CNBC - The head of Morgan Stanley’s prime brokerage arm in Asia, Kurt Baker, has left the firm amid the slump in Asia’s hedge fund industry, a source with direct knowledge of the situation said on Wednesday. A spokesman for the U.S. bank declined to comment. […]

Reuters - Investors who bought protection against a Lehman Brothers default in the credit default swaps market have little to worry about getting paid on Tuesday, when an estimated $8 billion in cash payments on Lehman CDS come due.
While these payments may push a few fragile hedge funds over the edge, analysts say, stringent collateral […]

Reuters - Malaysia is working on a plan to allow the creation of Islamic hedge funds.
"It is now in the developmental stage,” Goh Ching Yin, an executive director at the Securities Commission, was quoted as saying by Business Times newspaper.
"There’s no timeline, but we are making good progress.”
He said the plan could get off the […]

Bloomberg - Hedge funds run by Jeffrey Gendell and John Burbank III posted their worst monthly losses in October. Peter Thiel gave back gains made earlier in the year. Nobel-prize winner Myron Scholes froze his biggest fund.
The managers, like many in the $1.7 trillion hedge-fund industry, were caught in a downdraft of market declines, client […]

Washington Observer Reporter - Wall Street’s initial enthusiasm about a $586 billion Chinese stimulus package fizzled Monday, as investors succumbed to anxieties about how U.S. companies will survive a severe pullback in spending.
Stocks got a short-lived boost from China’s plans to boost its economy through a mix of spending, subsidies, looser credit policies and tax […]

Bloomberg - Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Japan’s second-largest bank by revenue, will start electronic trading in Asia after hiring a team of 16 former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. employees, two executives familiar with the plan said.
The team, led by Anthony Brooker, the former head of electronic trading sales for Lehman in Asia, will target hedge […]

Guardian.co.uk - Hedge funds and banks are expected to bear the brunt of derivative losses estimated at $15bn (£9.4bn) linked to the collapse of Iceland’s three major banks - Landsbanki, Glitnir and Kaupthing - which failed in rapid succession last month.
The complex unwinding of trades linked to debt issued by the banks began yesterday with […]

Reuters - Autonomy Capital Research LLP, a $1.7 billion hedge-fund firm run by former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc trader Robert Gibbins, halted withdrawals from its flagship fund after losses this year, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
The $1.2 billion Autonomy Capital Fund slumped about 40 percent this year through […]

Reuters - Several hedge funds with assets frozen at Lehman Brothers may have been hit by wrong-way bets on Volkswagen, industry executives said, possibly hurting funds on trades they cannot close.
While no money has yet been demanded by the prime brokerage unit of Lehman — which filed for bankruptcy protection in September — a fund […]

Bloomberg - Some hedge fund managers provided inaccurate information to investors in newsletters and monthly fact sheets, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission said.
In one instance, the hedge fund manager excluded the fund’s largest stock holding from its top five investments because of “oversight,” the regulator said in a statement issued late yesterday to all […]

Times Online - A new front is opening up in the battle between London and New York to be the world’s dominant financial centre.
Hedge funds, and the thorny question of where they decide to do business over the coming months, could mark a turning point in the delicate balance of power between the two […]