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 Times Blogs – A closely watched report by Goldman Sachs found that hedge funds made an outsize bet on financial stocks in the second quarter, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Goldman “Hedge Fund Trend Monitor” said hedge funds increased their ownership in financial stocks by 55 percent to $70 billion, compared with the previous quarter.
New York Times Blogs – Sure, it’s tough being a journalist these days. But if you think the news business is in trouble, try being a journalist turned financier. Some of the reporters who have left their ink-stained professions for the high-paying world of finance haven’t had it easy either.
The latest is Rob Speyer, scion of the Tishman Speyer real-estate empire. As the WSJ reported on Wednesday, a former reporter at The New York Observer and New York Daily News, Speyer is being groomed to take over the New York real estate firm, which recently defaulted on debt tied to a big portfolio of office buildings it bought in Washington, D.C. The firm also is under stress from its top-of-the-market purchase of Archstone Smith, a high-end-apartment landlord, and the Manhattan apartment complexes of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town. Speyer tells the WSJ that despite some problems, Tishman Speyer has a “good track record” and $2 billion in liquidity.
New York Times – The United States is building criminal cases against more than 150 American clients of UBS as part of a crackdown on tax evasion now made easier by a deal over access to secret account information.
U.S. prosecutors gave their first official confirmation of the initial number of criminal investigations in a filing on Tuesday with a federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The number of criminal probes is widely expected to mushroom soon, Reuters reported.
In the same court document, the prosecutors requested a sharply reduced prison sentence for ex-UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld, a key informant in the ongoing U.S. prosecutions of wealthy American clients of UBS.
New York Times – Russell Herman, the chief executive of the hedge fund firm Dawson-Herman Capital Management, is the latest manager to shutter his fund after heavy losses last year and differences with the firm’s founder, Jonathan Dawson.
Mr. Herman told clients in a letter last week that he was shutting the Southport Millennium Funds and returning capital to investors. The move was first reported by Dealbreaker.com on Friday. The firm currently has about $902 million of capital under management after reaching a height of $3.2 billion at the beginning of 2008.
Like many in the hedge fund industry, Dawson-Herman suffered big losses last year. The main Southport fund was down more than 35 percent and has failed to make up for the losses this year. “We have not been able to build the portfolios with high conviction ideas and themes to the degree that is satisfactory to me and in line with our historical standards,” Mr. Herman said in the letter.
New York Times Blogs – Selling a controlling stake in Phibro won’t cut it for Citigroup, Breakingviews writes.
Sure, it would probably quell some of the uproar around the flashpoint that put Citi’s full ownership of Phibro, a commodities trading unit, under public scrutiny: the $100 million bonus due to Phibro’s boss, Andrew J. Hall, this year. But the debate has since moved on to whether such a venture belongs in Citi’s portfolio of businesses at all. That is hard for the bank to justify.
The New York Times – Barclays shareholders overwhelmingly approved the bank’s sale of asset manager Barclays Global Investors to BlackRock for about $14 billion (8.3 billion pounds) on Thursday, but staff staged a protest against pension changes.Barclays chairman Marcus Agius told shareholders the bank was in the final days of consultation about controversial changes to its pension plan for UK staff, and could make changes to alleviate concerns and head off the threat of a strike.
New York Times – Despite the industry’s record losses in 2008, hedge funds generally aren’t lowering their fees without concessions from investors, such as longer lock-up periods and commitments of at least $100 million, money managers and consultants tell Bloomberg News.
While Larry Powell, deputy investment chief for the $16 billion Utah Retirement Systems, could crow at a June industry dinner in New York that more than half of Utah’s 40 hedge-fund managers agreed to changes in their fees, with four adopting his recommendations, top-performing managers haven’t adjusted yesteryear’s top-dollar fees, Bloomberg says.
New York Times Blogs – Actor Javier Bardem has turned down a role in the sequel to Oliver Stone’s seminal 1980s treatise on greed, “Wall Street.” The Oscar winner was to have played the world’s villain du jour: a hedge fund manager. Forbes reported that the actor’s publicist said he turned down the role due to scheduling conflicts.
It was reported in June that Mr. Bardem was circling the project although he was not yet officially cast. Starring in the film are Michael Douglas, who will reprise his role as Gordon Gekko, and Shia LaBeouf. Shooting is expected to start next month.
New York Times Blogs – Of all the gloomy economic indicators since the Wall Street collapse, perhaps the most startling one seen by New Jersey residents is this: Gov. Jon S. Corzine with his hand out.
Mr. Corzine, whose investments include significant holdings in private equity and hedge funds, famously spent $60 million of his own money on a record-shattering Senate race in 2000, then $43 million more laying siege to Trenton four years ago.
New York Times Blogs – A move by the European Commission to adopt proposed regulation for hedge funds could end up igniting a transatlantic regulatory war, one of Britain’s hedge fund veterans warned in an interview with The Financial Times.
Stanley Fink, the former chief executive of Man Group dubbed the “godfather” of the British hedge fund industry, told the newspaper that tightened regulation being proposed by the commission would be “very restrictive” for non-EU funds, and could provoke retaliation by large swaths of the industry located outside the EU.
New York Times – Jean-Pierre Aguilar, a pioneer in hedge fund investing in Europe and chief executive and co-founder of Capital Fund Management, died in a gliding accident over the weekend, the company said in a letter to investors Sunday. He was 49.
The accident, which occurred late Saturday morning near the airport of Barcelonnette, a town in the French Alps about 12 miles, or 20 kilometers, from the Italian border, also killed Mr. Aguilar’s co-pilot, Michel Fache, 56, president of the local gliding club, according to the local newspaper La Provence.
New York Times Blogs – In his court testimony on Wednesday in New York, Mr. Wilson — formerly a senior executive of Silver Point Capital, a hedge fund specializing in distressed-debt investments — described some of the negotiation process that shaped G.M.’s bankruptcy case. The administration’s auto task force had decided upon an asset sale plan by mid-May, as G.M. began a debt-exchange offer with its bondholders as part of a government-supported restructuring plan.
By pursuing an asset sale, G.M. could be assured of greater speed, certainty and the ability to shed unwanted liabilities, Mr. Wilson said.
Because the government was essentially G.M.’s lender of last resort, it could effectively dictate what it found acceptable as a turnaround plan, Mr. Wilson testified.
