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.
Reuters – Harvard University’s multibillion dollar endowment is adopting a strategy of selling off some holdings in hedge funds, private-equity firms and other money managers to bring more money under the control of internal investing staff over the next few years, the Wall Street Journal said.
Jane Mendillo, head of Harvard endowment, told the paper the university’s move would allow it to be more nimble, have better transparency into the portfolio and more liquidity.
Reuters – Harvard University’s multibillion dollar endowment is adopting a strategy of selling off some holdings in hedge funds, private-equity firms and other money managers to bring more money under the control of internal investing staff over the next few years, the Wall Street Journal said.
Jane Mendillo, head of Harvard endowment, told the paper the university’s move would allow it to be more nimble, have better transparency into the portfolio and more liquidity.
Reuters – Harvard Management Co, which invests the Ivy League school’s multibillion dollar endowment, hired two investment managers away from two prominent hedge funds, the university said on Wednesday.
Emil Dabora, a senior managing director at Caxton Associates, will join as an equity portfolio manager while Michele Toscani, now at Fortress Investment Group, will join the international fixed income portfolio management team.
Reuters – Renaissance Technologies LLC, the multibillion dollar hedge fund known for delivering top returns by relying on complicated computer models, hired a new president and chief executive officer for its institutional business.
The fund firm, which manages roughly $20 billion, said on Tuesday that it has hired Matthew Scanlan to replace Stephen Robert, who retired from the firm.
Scanlan joins the firm from Barclays Global Investors where he worked for 12 years and was most recently the company’s head of institutional business in the Americas.
West Sussex County Times – A former soldier who shot himself in the head in Southampton was facing bankruptcy after becoming the victim of an alleged fraud by US banker Bernard Madoff, his grieving son said.
The son of William Foxton, 65, said he father was so distraught after losing his family’s entire savings in the multibillion-dollar investment scam that he shot himself in a park on Tuesday with a handgun.
Boston Globe – Despite the gloom gripping the markets, Bain Capital has raised $475 million for a new venture capital fund, according to two executives with direct knowledge of the fund.
It is the firm’s fourth fund that invests in start-ups. Bain is perhaps best known for its multibillion-dollar private equity deals. The Boston firm manages about $70 billion total, including a hedge fund and a debt fund that it runs.
Reuters – Multibillion dollar hedge fund firm Magnetar Capital has shut its London risk arbitrage desk and cut seven jobs, the firm told Reuters on Monday, as the industry goes through its biggest crisis.
A spokesman said four traders and three support staff had left the 15-person London office of Magnetar, which runs multi-strategy hedge funds.
"There’s been an appropriate reduction in the office to reflect the decision of the firm not currently to do risk arbitrage out of its London office," the spokesman said.
Newsday – Maybe you heard the one about the phony multibillion-dollar Long Island hedge fund that was actually performing a public service.
No? Well, apparently neither did four confidence men, according to federal prosecutors.
The four were convicted yesterday in federal court in Central Islip after walking into a federal sting operation in which they thought they were about to collect $3 billion from a hedge fund. The money was to be used to build what they said was a pipeline through the Russian Republic of Buryatia, prosecutors said.
The unnamed fund was a creation of FBI agents and the Postal Inspection Service, Assistant U.S. Attorney James Miskiewicz said during the seven-day trial.
Minneapolis Star Tribune – Like most market watchers, last year’s participants in the Star Tribune Investor Roundtable failed to predict that 2008 would be a year of stomach-churning stock market declines, failed financial institutions, multibillion-dollar bailouts and credit markets as frozen as a Minnesota lake in January.
"I think everybody in the room knew there was more leverage, more speculation, more betting on the economy, but it amazes me that it got to this level," said Phil Dow, director of equity strategy at RBC Wealth Management.
But what the group of Twin Cities investment professionals did foresee a year ago was a period of unprecedented stock market volatility. The VIX index, a gauge of market swings, reached a record high this fall.
Chicago Tribune – The Citadel Investment Group will shutter its Tokyo offices and cut 37 jobs from its Asian operations.
The Chicago-based hedge fund will still have a presence in Hong Kong, where 25 positions will be cut, the company said Monday. The investment firm founded by billionaire Ken Griffin in 1990 will maintain 25 to 30 staffers in Hong Kong. A regional group that invested in companies undergoing mergers, asset sales or lawsuits will be cut.
Citadel’s decision comes after its two primary funds reported losses of 47 percent through November. The firm manages $16 billion in assets.
Bloomberg – D.E. Shaw & Co. LP, the investment firm run by David Shaw, and Farallon Capital Management LLC limited withdrawals by clients, joining more than 80 hedge-fund managers to impose restrictions in the past two months.
D.E. Shaw, which oversees $36 billion, capped redemptions from its Composite and Oculus funds, said two people familiar with the New York-based company. Farallon, a $30 billion firm based in San Francisco, did the same with its biggest fund after investors asked to get back more than 25 percent of their money.
The firms are two of the biggest to block withdrawals, known as putting up gates, so they aren’t forced to liquidate investments at distressed prices to raise cash. New York-based Fortress Investment Group LLC said yesterday it froze an $8 billion fund after getting redemption requests for 40 percent of its assets. Tudor Investment Corp., the Greenwich, Connecticut, firm run by Paul Tudor Jones, locked the $10 billion BVI Global fund last week ahead of plans to split the fund into two.
Bloomberg – Parkcentral Capital Management LP, an investment firm that manages money for the family of former U.S. presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, is liquidating a fixed-income hedge fund because it’s “no longer viable.”
Parkcentral Global Hub Ltd.’s assets fell as much as 40 percent to $1.5 billion this year through October. The fund is selling remaining holdings to pay creditors, Eddie Reeves, a spokesman for the Plano, Texas-based firm, said in an e-mailed statement today. Perot, 78, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. president in 1992, and members of his family are the fund’s biggest investors.
