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.
Bloomberg – The head of J-Power, Japan’s largest electricity wholesaler, wants to attract long-term investors to replace its biggest stakeholder, hedge fund TCI, which exited after seeking his ouster in a feud over corporate management.
“Investors such as pension funds, which seek stable returns in this time of financial turmoil, may be one of our preferred investors, in addition to individuals, who search for vehicles for long-term investment,” Yoshihiko Nakagaki, president of the Tokyo-based utility, officially known as Electric Power Development Co., said in an interview in Tokyo.
One of the pleasures of flying out of Newark — and there are so many — is the epic view of Manhattan, that soaring bulwark of affluence and might just off the coast of America.
But on Friday, when we pulled out for points west just after sunrise, I imagined all the brick-and-mortar ambition sinking into the rivers that encircle it. No need to ask why so glum, not with everybody watching their 401(k)’s pirouette down a black hole. Each passing day has brought new nightmares on Wall Street and more shared misery.
Still, by the end of the day, I was sitting on a hotel patio in Los Angeles, staring up the hill at that Hollywood sign and chatting with a smart young woman who markets movies. When the subject of the tumbling economy finally came up, she said that she had indeed been cutting back — by ordering drip coffee instead of a latte.
I waited a bit for the woman to crack a smile, to hammer me for being so credulous, but then I realized she was serious.
Daily Telegraph – As short-selling is banned to protect Britain’s banks, Gordon Rayner names the men who have made millions from the financial crisis
As 70,000 employees of HBOS wonder which of them will still have jobs this time next month, they will no doubt be looking for someone to blame for the extinction of their once great employer.
As the dust settled yesterday on the ruins of Britain’s fifth-biggest banking group, there was little doubt as to the immediate cause of their misery – the hedge fund billionaires who have made a killing by playing poker with their livelihoods.
Globe and Mail – Joe E. Lewis, the late American nightclub comic and inveterate horse player, once quipped: "I hope I break even. I need the money." That could very well become a mantra in the hedge fund world, where even the best and brightest of managers with impressive track records have been suffering through some of their worst results in years.
In the first three months of this year alone, 170 funds in the United States went out of business, and that was before things got really bad. Globally, hedge funds ended the first half with their most dismal performance in a decade. And then came the selloff in resource stocks, which brought misery to commodity funds, one of the few bright spots earlier in the year. July ended up being the worst month for futures in more than five years.
Scotia Capital’s Canadian hedge fund index, a useful measure of performance, was off 8.6 per cent on an asset-weighted basis last month, bested by both the gloom-laden TSX composite and S&P 500 indexes.
