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Reuters UK - Balyasny Asset Management LP recruited more than 30 money managers and analysts from competing hedge funds in the first eight months of the year, exceeding its total for all of 2007.
“We have been aggressively looking for talent, and in a year like this, there are a lot more candidates out there,” said Barry Colvin, vice chairman of the Chicago-based firm, which oversees $2.5 billion. Hires came from New York-based Satellite Asset Management LP and Magnetar Capital LLC in Chicago, which have both lost money this year.
While more than 200 hedge funds shut down this year, Balyasny, SAC Capital Advisors LLC and Citadel Investment Group LLC are taking advantage of the industry’s worst performance in a decade to go on a hiring spree. Hedge funds, diminished by a scarcity of credit and enfeebled stock markets, fell by an average 4.7 percent as of Aug. 28, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. in Chicago.
Sixty-one percent of the 2,795 funds managing more than $100 million that are in New York-based HedgeFund.net’s database are losing money in 2008.
Bloomberg - Balyasny Asset Management LP recruited more than 30 money managers and analysts from competing hedge funds in the first eight months of the year, exceeding its total for all of 2007.
“We have been aggressively looking for talent, and in a year like this, there are a lot more candidates out there,” said Barry Colvin, vice chairman of the Chicago-based firm, which oversees $2.5 billion. Hires came from New York-based Satellite Asset Management LP and Magnetar Capital LLC in Chicago, which have both lost money this year.
While more than 200 hedge funds shut down this year, Balyasny, SAC Capital Advisors LLC and Citadel Investment Group LLC are taking advantage of the industry’s worst performance in a decade to go on a hiring spree. Hedge funds, diminished by a scarcity of credit and enfeebled stock markets, fell by an average 4.7 percent as of Aug. 28, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. in Chicago.
New York Post - Former Goldman Sachs exec Steve Mandis has left the $12 billion hedge fund Halcyon Asset Management - one of the oldest hedge funds on Wall Street, according to an investor letter.
Mandis was vice chairman and chief investment officer at Halcyon Structured Asset Management LP, a lending subsidiary of Halcyon that he helped co-found about four years ago with about $1 billion in capital.
According to an investor letter issued Tuesday and obtained by The Post, Mandis’ departure is "effective immediately," and the firm expects to announce a succession plan "as soon as possible."
Although the official reason for Mandis’ departure could not be learned, people familiar with the matter said his lending subsidiary had been performing poorly and was drawing the ire of some of the firm’s biggest institutional investors.
Bloomberg - Stanley Shopkorn, a former head of equities trading at Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management LLC, plans to open a global stocks hedge fund, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.
Hilltop Park Fund LP, based in New York, is scheduled to start trading Oct. 1, said the person, who asked not to be named because the fund is private. Shopkorn declined to comment.
Shopkorn, 65, has managed money for wealthy clients since leaving New York-based Moore Capital in 2002. Bacon hired him in 1996 to build the firm’s equities business. Before that, Shopkorn ran hedge fund Ethos Capital LP and was a vice chairman at Salomon Brothers.
“It’s not the best of times to start a new fund,” said Graziano Lusenti, founder of Nyon, Switzerland-based Lusenti Partners LLC, an investment adviser. “Investors have become more adverse to allocating capital to hedge funds given how their performance hasn’t been overwhelming this year.”
MarketWatch - James Pallotta, vice chairman and managing director of U.S. public equities at Tudor Investment Corp., is leaving the giant hedge fund firm and plans to launch the Raptor Global Funds unit he runs as a separate business, according to a letter Tudor sent to investors this week.
Pallotta will spin off Raptor at the end of 2008 and set up a new, independent firm that will initially focus on public equity investments, Tudor explained. Over time, Raptor will branch out into private investments too, the firm added in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by MarketWatch.
"Tudor will support Jim in the creation of his new firm and anticipates that it will invest capital in new funds Jim launches," Paul Tudor Jones II, chairman of Tudor, wrote in the letter. "We expect there will be many opportunities for collaboration on investments in future years."
A spokesman for Tudor said the firm declined to comment.
Pallotta will continue to manage the Raptor Global and Altar Rock Funds as well as a portion of Tudor’s main BVI Global Fund. On Jan. 1, 2009, the management of the Raptor Global Funds will transition to the new firm.
Globe and Mail - GMP Securities enjoyed a solid debut with its new and much-scrutinized hedge fund.
GMP Diversified Alpha Fund, a multi-strategy fund launched last year by the investment dealer, published its first set of performance numbers Thursday as part of the parent income trust’s financial results.
The fund, which is run in part by GMP’s star stock trader and vice chairman Michael Wekerle, posted a 6.2 per cent return over its first three months of operation, a quarterthat ended June 30. The fund has $196-million of assets.
Over the same period, the benchmark Scotia Capital Canadian hedge fund index returned 5.93 per cent over the same period on an equal weighted basis, and 9.93 per cent on an asset weighted basis that puts more emphasis on performance at the larger domestic hedge funds.
GMP’s venture into the hedge fund world has drawn attention on the Street because of Mr. Wekerle’s dual role as both a part of the hedge fund team and head of the dealer’s equity desk.
Bloomberg - Leopard Capital, which is setting up a $100 million private-equity fund to invest in Cambodia, said it’s competing to buy a stake in Acleda Bank Plc, the largest Cambodian bank.
“It’s the best-run bank, it’s clean and it has very good margins,” Thomas Hugger, executive director at Leopard Capital, said in an interview in Singapore today.
Leopard Capital is vying with other foreign investors that are seeking to invest in Cambodian companies after the economy grew at least 10 percent in the last four years. Acleda Bank, based in Phnom Penh, reported a 46 percent jump in net income to a record $9.7 million in 2007, according to its annual report.
“We have a lot of people sniffing around, ready to buy into us,” John Brinsden, vice chairman of Acleda Bank, said in an interview in Phnom Penh on June 18, declining to give details.
Acleda’s assets more than doubled to $473 million in 2007, from $223 million the previous year, according to its annual report. Loans almost doubled to $311 million, from $157 million over the same period. The bank had 204 offices across Cambodia at the end of last year.
Financial Times- Even as politicians and regulators accuse hedge fund short-sellers of trying to bring down banks in Britain, the US and Australia, top hedge managers are providing rescue capital to prop up the ailing corporate world.
The latest bail-out backed by hedge funds is the £4.5bn cash raising by Britain’s Barclays, where five big managers are ready to provide just under 10 per cent of the new money - with sovereign wealth funds providing the majority of the rest.
Hedge funds are important backers of the current wave of rights issues, too, according to investment bankers close to the deals. In spite of publicly-declared short positions - where hedge funds hope to profit from falling prices - several big hedge funds are sub-underwriting the rescue rights issue by HBOS, the biggest mortgage lender, guaranteeing to buy the shares if the rights are not taken up.
"Although equity underwriting currently looks difficult, hedge fund participation in this market has increased as their asset base has grown," says Jim Renwick, vice-chairman at UBS. "This has been the case for more than five years now."
Reuters- Antonio Borges, a former senior banker at Goldman Sachs, has been appointed chairman of the Hedge Fund Standards Board (HFSB), the custodian of the voluntary standards scheme devised by leading members of the sector.
Borges, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International until February and a former dean of the European business school Insead and vice governor of Banco de Portugal, will assume the role on July 1.
The HFSB will oversee the code of practice devised by the Hedge Fund Working Group, which comprised 14 leading hedge fund executives mainly based in London and was led by Andrew Large, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England.