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.
ShareCast – Private equity group BlueGem is to take a 40% stake in stockbroker Panmure Gordon in a move that will inject £17.3m of capital into the broker.Panmure Gordon has placed 72m new shares with BlueGem at 24p per share.
The acquisition of the stake represents BlueGem’s fourth investment and its first in the financial services sector. The company was formed in late 2006 by experienced investment bankers and fund managers to make investments in mid-market companies, predominantly in the UK and Italy.
The net proceeds from the placing will ‘significantly strengthen the company’s balance sheet’, the company said, giving it regulatory assets in excess of £40m, more than three times more than its required regulatory capital.
Globe and Mail – Math whiz Ravi Sood has ridden the highs and lows of the wild world of hedge funds.
The president of Lawrence Asset Management Inc. made a name for himself running the firm’s flagship hedge fund with stellar returns such as his 75-per-cent gain in 2007.
But the stock market crash has dealt a blow to Lawrence Partners Fund, which suspended redemptions this week after plunging 65 per cent for the first 10 months of this year.
The investment firm “believes it is in the best interests of all shareholders to suspend redemptions for 60 days,” the 32-year-old manager told investors in letter on Monday.
Globe and Mail – Hedge fund manager Ravi Sood is having a rough time navigating through the tsunami that has hit stock markets around the world.
The stellar record of his Lawrence Partners Fund suffered a 48-per-cent hair cut in September, sending its year-to-date loss to 53 per cent for the first nine months of 2008.
Mr. Sood would not comment about his fund, but told investors in a letter that he was forced to "reduce the size of core positions at inopportune levels in midmonth. …
"We cannot restore all of this year’s loss to date in the next few months or quarters, but we are confident we will get there," said the president of Toronto’s Lawrence Asset Management Inc.
Globe and Mail – On monday, when North American markets cratered, was not the most auspicious day to launch a closed-end fund of hedge funds, but Star Hedge Managers Corp. has been quietly trading since then.
This fund invests in the hedge funds or portfolios run by Eric Sprott of Sprott Asset Management Inc., Rohit Sehgal of Dynamic Mutual Funds Ltd. and Normand Lamarche of Front Street Capital.
Star Hedge Managers, which closed down 39 cents yesterday at $9.35 on the Toronto Stock Exchange, raised $75-million through an initial public offering of $10 a unit. It had targeted raising $500-million.
"I’m surprised" that it did raise $75-million given the tough market environment, said Phil Schmitt, chairman of the Canadian unit of the Alternative Investment Management Association. "There’s still a market for quality managers."
Bloomberg – Rogers Investment Advisors Y.K., a Tokyo-based hedge fund adviser, has hired Yoshiaki Iizuka and Eric Chong as it expects to more than double assets by the year-end.
Iizuka, 52, joined Rogers Investment on Aug. 1 as a managing director and head of Japanese research in Tokyo, after his most recent stint as chief investment officer of Tokyo-based Traders Investment Management Co., now JPS Asset Management Co., Ed Rogers, chief executive officer of Rogers Investment, said in an interview in Tokyo. Iizuka was chief executive officer of American Express Financial Advisors Japan Inc., Rogers said.
Chong, 36, joined Wolver Hill Advisors in New York, the U.S. counterpart of Rogers Investment, in mid-July, as a risk manager, Rogers said. He was most recently a risk manager at Societe Generale Asset Management Inc. in New York, where he was responsible for risk evaluation and analysis for a $5 billion fund of hedge funds, according to Rogers. Prior to that, Chong was a vice president at Stamford, Connecticut-based K2 Advisors LLC, a $6 billion multi-strategy fund of hedge funds.
Toronto Star- In one of Canada’s biggest investment scandals, regulators pulled the plug on Portus Alternative Asset Management Inc. in early 2005.
The now-bankrupt Toronto company was selling risky hedge funds to ordinary investors, using a complex structure that avoided mandatory disclosure in a prospectus.
Luckily, the 26,000 people who invested more than $700 million in Portus products didn’t lose everything.
Clients of Manulife Financial Corp. were reimbursed in full – with a payout of $246 million by the insurer. Other Portus investors recouped most of their money through receivers last year.
