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.
New York (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge fund manager Richard Bookstaber will be speaking at is year’s HedgeWorld Fall Conference. He is the author of “A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation,” a book that pinpointed the market weaknesses that spun out of control to create today’s financial crisis.
“A Demon of Our Own Design” ranked number one on Amazon in finance and was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Loeb Award. Bookstaber was named to this year’s Conde Nast Portfolio list of top 25 technical innovators, joining the ranks of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Eric Schmidt.
He has testified before the House and Senate, calling for greater transparency and improved regulation for Wall Street long before it was fashionable. BOOKSTABER recently worked at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, and before that ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners.
He was in charge of risk management at Moore Capital Management, another hedge fund with over $10 billion in assets. He served as the managing director in charge of firm-wide risk management at Salomon Brothers and was a member of Salomon’s powerful Risk Management Committee. Bookstaber also spent ten years at Morgan Stanley, first designing and marketing derivative instruments, then as a proprietary trader, and concluding his tenure there as Morgan Stanley’s first market risk manager. In addition to A Demon of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007), he is the author of three other books and scores of articles on finance topics ranging from option theory to risk management. He has won the Graham and Dodd Scroll from the Financial Analysts Federation and the Roger F. Murray Award from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance for his research. Bookstaber has a Ph.D in Economics from M.I.T.
The conference is being held at the Metropolitan Club in New York on October 6th, 2009.
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.net alex@hedgeco.net 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!
Chris Shumway runs a $5 billion hedge fund and is best known for intensive fundamental research to create long/short equity portfolios. He is a ‘Tiger Cub’ because he formerly served as Julian Robertson’s right-hand man while at Tiger Management. Taken from our post on ‘Tiger Cub’ biographies:
Chris Shumway is the Founding Partner of Shumway Capital Partners (“SCP”), an investment management firm founded in 2001. SCP, which manages a multibillion dollar group of private investment funds, uses a private equity-like research model for public market investment on a global basis. Prior to forming SCP, Mr. Shumway was a Senior Managing Director at Tiger Management (1992-1999), an Analyst at Brentwood Associates (1990-1991), and an Analyst at Morgan Stanley & Co. (1988-1990). He received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School (1993) and a B.S. from the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia (1988).
Bloomberg – Abax Global Capital Ltd., a Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager backed by Morgan Stanley, plans to start a private equity fund in China that invests in companies making environmentally friendly products such as clean energy.
The yuan-denominated fund aims to raise about 500 million yuan ($73 million) from Chinese investors by its first close in two months, Donald Yang, Abax’s Hong Kong-based president, said in a phone interview Aug. 21. It will be sponsored by a large Chinese financial institution, whose name he declined to reveal because of pending regulatory reviews of the plan.
Marketwatch – China’s sovereign wealth fund has selected Morgan Stanley and Blackstone Group LP to oversee hundreds of millions of dollars in new investments, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The $200 billion China Investment Corp. has finalized an additional allocation of $500 million to Blackstone’s /quotes/comstock/13*!bx/quotes/nls/bx (BX11.42, +0.46, +4.20%) fund-of-funds unit, and an additional allocation of money has been earmarked for investment through Morgan Stanley’s /quotes/comstock/13*!ms/quotes/nls/ms (MS28.31, +1.15, +4.23%) asset-management unit, according to the report, which cited people familiar with the situation.
The sovereign wealth fund is also in discussions to potentially invest billions more in hedge funds, possibly doling out money directly to managers rather than using a fund-of-funds vehicles, the report said.
Wall Street Journal – China Investment Corp.’s $200 billion sovereign-wealth fund is reaching out to old friends in the U.S. as it ventures into hedge-fund investing.
The fund has selected Morgan Stanley and Blackstone Group LP to oversee hundreds of millions of dollars in new private-fund investments, people familiar with the matter said.
HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – Cinneas Foreign Exchange LLC, an alternative investment management firm specializing in momentum based trading in the foreign exchange market, have announced the launch of a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA).
The Cinneas investment process combines technical, fundamental and intraday market flow analysis with the careful application of leverage for the purpose of delivering non-correlated returns, preserving capital and mitigating risk. Cinneas offers a low barrier to entry with a minimum investment of $5,000 with no lock-up period.
Cinneas was founded by Morgan Stanley veterans Michael Myrtetus and Douglas Borthwick. Myrtetus and Borthwick met in 1996 when Douglas joined Morgan Stanley’s foreign exchange trading team. At that time Morgan Stanley’s FX business had revenues approximating $200 million. Over the 9 years they worked together, the business grew to approximately $1 billion.
"We believe that an actively managed, globally diverse portfolio can adapt and grow with the changing markets," said Douglas Borthwick, Managing Partner. "Our approach draws upon global economic, fundamental, and technical analysis to identify momentum trading opportunities, with the ultimate goal of producing non-correlated risk-adjusted returns."
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HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – Hedge fund and alternative investment advisory company, Tru/Alpha Capital Advisors (TACA), is being launched to specialize in international alternative markets, advising institutional and corporate clients, as well as high-net worth individuals.
Based in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia, TACA is headed by Harvard-graduate and past Morgan Stanley executive Monty Bruell. Mixing its full-scale advisory expertise and network of reputable partners, TACA’s team brings years of experience, credentials and proven performance in the alternative and International investment marketplace.
The company is one of few African-American owned wealth and asset management companies in the southeast.
Tru/Alpha’s niche in the international and alternative markets offers more focused insight and expertise on strategies such as international equities, international fixed-income, structured notes, commodities and hedge funds among others.
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!
Reuters India – Nomura Holdings plans to launch a global prime brokerage business by September as the financial crisis creates room for new players to offer lucrative services to hedge funds, a senior executive said on Monday.
The move shows how Japan’s biggest investment bank, which scooped the European, Middle Eastern and Asian units of bankrupt Lehman Brothers, is muscling into an industry once dominated by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Bloomberg – China Investment Corp., the nation’s $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, may invest as much as $500 million in hedge funds including those run by Blackstone Group LP, said two people familiar with the matter.
CIC aims to allocate $6 billion to hedge funds by the end of 2009, company adviser Felix Chee said two days ago at the GAIM International hedge fund conference at Monaco’s Grimaldi Forum. Chee, who is a special adviser to the chief investment officer of CIC, said he will initially run CIC’s hedge fund and proprietary trading effort.
The move adds to signs of improved confidence by CIC Chairman Lou Jiwei, who said in December that he didn’t “dare to invest in financial institutions” after losing money on investments in Blackstone and Morgan Stanley. CIC raised its stake in Morgan Stanley earlier this month by buying an additional $1.2 billion shares.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Morgan Stanley is offering enhanced asset protection to its prime brokerage clients, announcing an expansion of its prime brokerage offering with the launch of new custodial services for long securities held by Prime Brokerage clients.
The custodial services will be provided directly by Morgan Stanley Trust National Association (MSTNA), a U.S national chartered trust company. MSTNA gives clients the option to hold their long securities with a Morgan Stanley subsidiary that is independent from Morgan Stanley’s U.S. and U.K. broker dealers.
"Recent market events have increased the demand for solutions that mitigate counter-party risk for hedge funds," said Rich Portogallo, Head of Institutional Clients and Services at Morgan Stanley. "The launch of new custodial services from MSTNA underscores Morgan Stanley’s commitment to providing hedge fund managers and investors with alternative asset protection solutions in addition to our best in class financing services and technology."
"We are excited to offer this new asset-protection platform to our clients," said Joe Davis, Managing Director in Morgan Stanley Prime Brokerage and President of the custody business of MSTNA. "We have created a platform that provides a seamless client experience across Prime Brokerage’s and MSTNA’s systems, and offers fully automated transfers, aggregated reporting and a single client service point of contact."
Alex Akesson
Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: alex@hedgeco.net
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) – Institutional brokerage and hedge fund services company BTIG LLC, announced the further expansion of its Global Fixed Income Group with four new hires.
The Global Fixed Income Group was launched in February of this year by Jon Bass, formerly of UBS, and John Purcell, formerly of Citigroup. The group focuses on sales and trading of credit products, which will cover the full credit spectrum from investment grade to distressed debt.
George Chalhoub has joined BTIG from Deutsche Bank where he ran the high yield proprietary portfolio on the high yield desk. Chalhoub spent 15 years in high yield research at Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch and Citigroup.
Mychal Harrison and Todd Sycoff have been hired as high yield traders in New York. Harrison joins BTIG from Barclays where he last traded high yield cash and credit default swaps. He began his career at Goldman Sachs in high yield syndicate before transitioning into high yield trading. Sycoff comes to BTIG from Bear Stearns where he was last on the buy side as the high yield portfolio manager in the asset management division. Prior to that, Sycoff spent 16 years on the trading desks of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch as the head high yield trader.
Chris LeVine comes to BTIG from UBS where he was an executive director in the Fixed Income Sales Group focusing on investment grade and high yield credit. He will be in fixed income sales in BTIG’s New York office. Prior to UBS, LeVine worked at MarketAxess, Trading Edge and started his career at Morgan Stanley after Graduating Cornell University.
“We have been focused on expanding the firm’s capabilities in fixed income over the past few months and are excited to have George, Mychal, Todd and Chris join the group,” Jon Bass, Co-Head of Global Fixed Income, said. “Their combined experience will greatly enhance the efforts of our new division.”
“We have been able to attract top talent with deep institutional relationships and respected reputations on the Street that will help us better serve our clients in the fixed income area,” John Purcell, Co-Head of Global Fixed Income, said. “During the coming weeks, we expect to announce additional hires in fixed income as part of our overall plan to grow the group to 60 people globally this year.”
The Global Fixed Income Group was launched in February of this year by Bass, formerly of UBS, and Purcell, formerly of Citigroup, who together bring 50 years of fixed income experience to the BTIG team. The group focuses on sales and trading of credit products, which will cover the full credit spectrum from investment grade to distressed debt.
BTIG serves nearly 1,000 institutional customers and offers services from four divisions: Institutional Trading, Prime Brokerage, Outsource Trading and Direct Market Access. BTIG has offices in New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Greenwich, Red Bank, Aspen and Orinda. The firm also has affiliates in London, Hong Kong and Sydney.
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Bloomberg – Abax Global Capital Ltd., a Hong Kong-based asset manager part-owned by Morgan Stanley, plans to open a hedge fund backed by Tudor Investment Corp. to outside investors for the first time.
The Abax Dymon Asia Macro Fund, which started with $113 million in August 2008, seeks to profit from regional economic trends. The fund will have a “clawback” arrangement under which half of the 20 percent performance fee earned is repaid to investors if the fund loses money in the next year.
