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 – Hedge fund managers may want to get their heads examined.
We’re not talking Rorschach tests and distant memories of parents. Rather, psychiatrist Ari Kiev has helped hundreds of star traders improve their market performance by increasing concentration, managing stress and being well prepared for bad situations.
Bloomberg – Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Japan’s second-largest bank by revenue, will start electronic trading in Asia after hiring a team of 16 former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. employees, two executives familiar with the plan said.
The team, led by Anthony Brooker, the former head of electronic trading sales for Lehman in Asia, will target hedge funds and institutional investors with electronic products and systems for equities trading, the executives said. They declined to be identified as the plan isn’t public.
Mizuho, which cut its full-year profit forecast 55 percent on Oct. 31 because of rising bad loans and investment losses, is building its equity trading business in Asia to challenge Nomura Holdings Inc. Brooker was among hundreds of Lehman employees who opted to join competitors rather than staying with Nomura after the firm agreed to buy Lehman operations in Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Nomura is taking over about 8,000 Lehman workers following the Wall Street firm’s collapse in September.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Lehman Brothers, Wall Street’s fourth biggest investment bank has filed for bankruptcy, making it the largest and highest-profile casualty of the global credit crisis, with approximately $639 billion in assets.
The bank said the Chapter 11 filing will not include its broker-dealer operations and other units, including Neuberger Berman. Lehman is looking at selling its broker-dealer operations, and is still in advanced discussions with a number of potential buyers of its investment management division.
Investors in recent weeks had grown increasingly jittery about Lehman’s $46 billion of mortgages and asset-backed securities, as well as its credit rating and its ability to raise capital.
Bankruptcy also represents a bad end to Chief Executive Dick Fuld’s four-decade career at Lehman. Fuld, who piloted the investment bank through prior crises with aplomb, was widely seen as too slow to recognize Lehman’s need to raise capital and shed bad assets.
Lehman listed its biggest unsecured creditors as Citigroup Inc, Bank of New York Mellon Corp, Aozora Bank, and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. Citi and Bank of New York Mellon are trustees for Lehman bonds.
The firm said that as of May 31, it owed about $110.5 billion on account of senior unsecured notes, about $12.6 billion on account of subordinated unsecured notes and about $5 billion on account of junior subordinated notes.
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds!
Guardian Unlimited- The Children’s Investment Fund has bought shares in two major investors in the Japanese company J-Power, weeks after its attempt to double its stake in the electricity supplier was blocked by the Japanese government.
The hedge fund – popularly known as TCI – bought minor stakes in Mizuho Financial Group, Japan’s second-biggest bank, Kajima Corp, a big construction company, and about eight other shareholders, as it exerts pressure on the management of J-Power ahead of its shareholder meeting next month.
