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. […]

Bloomberg - Brazilian hedge funds saw a record 14.3 billion reais ($6.7 billion) in withdrawals last month after returns trailed a fixed-income benchmark even while defying a 25 percent plunge in the Bovespa stock index.
The redemptions brought total outflows this year to 48.9 billion reais, shrinking the industry by 16 percent, according to data released […]

Bloomberg - Brazilian hedge funds saw a record 14.3 billion reais ($6.7 billion) in withdrawals last month after returns trailed a fixed-income benchmark even while defying a 25 percent plunge in the Bovespa stock index.
The redemptions brought total outflows this year to 48.9 billion reais, shrinking the industry by 16 percent, according to data released […]

Bloomberg - Komodo Capital Management Pte’s hedge fund outperformed rivals as Chief Investment Officer Angus Cameron employed strategies he developed during Japan’s slump in the 1990s to profit from the global financial turmoil.
The Singapore-based firm’s KC Asia Fund has gained 8.3 percent this year, Cameron said yesterday. Other macro hedge funds, which seek to profit […]

Chicago Tribune - "The key change in the next decade is that policymakers around the world have chosen the winners and losers," Griffin said at a Wednesday panel. "The winners are the banking system."
By selecting commercial banks to become the centerpiece of the financial industry, the government closed the era of investment banks and hedge […]

Bloomberg - If Sherlock Holmes were analyzing the credit crunch, he would be drawing our attention to the dog that didn’t bark, just as he did in “The Hound of the Baskervilles.”
The dog, of course, would be hedge and private-equity funds.
Anyone tracking markets in recent years will remember the prediction […]

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Employment offers in financial services fell by 11% in September compared to 6 months ago, according to Powerchex Limited, a pre-employment screening firm for financial institutions.
Research by Powerchex showed that Investment Banks made the biggest cutback with 52% less jobs being offered in September compared to 6 months ago. Uncertainty […]

Reuters - An unprecedented cash crunch is choking the ability of banks to lend and creating an opportunity for hedge funds to launch, or ramp up corporate lending facilities.
Companies that have relied on bank borrowing to grow, or even maintain their business, are turning to hedge funds in a move that some say may signal a […]

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Moscow’s The Statesman reports that a Russian rogue trader lost his investment bank up to $50 million in risky trades that went wrong in the financial crisis, the Vedomosti business daily reported today. Quoting unnamed sources at Renaissance Capital, one of Russia’s biggest investment banks, Vedomosti reported that the rogue […]

Boston Globe - US Representative Barney Frank yesterday staked out the next battlefront in the economic crisis gripping the world: more regulation of hedge funds, investment banks, and other financial institutions.

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Times Online - Some called it chutzpah. Some were more charitable, describing it as an exercise in putting on a brave face. Whatever it was, Michael Spencer’s claim that it was business as usual at Icap, when that company handles trades between investment banks while those same banks are falling like ninepins, was never […]

Gawker - Last week the Observer, Tom Wolfe said the truly rich would be protected from the Wall Street meltdown because all the smart guys had long since decamped for hedge funds, leaving investment banks staffed by "real second-raters." This weekend in the Times, the author of Bonfire of the Vanities clarified that statement by […]