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 – An increasing number of sovereign wealth funds are working in concert to make joint strategic investments in order to reduce risks and maximize returns, which could provide a stabilizing force in financial markets.
State-owned funds from China, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait are among those which have recently signed agreements to form investment partnerships with each other.
These partnerships will enable state-owned funds to optimize local knowledge, leverage capital, spread investment risks and maximize returns.
The Australian – HFA, which has $5.8 billion in assets, joins a long line of fund managers — including Perpetual, Babcock & Brown and Macquarie Group — in suspending redemptions from some funds this year as the credit crisis takes its toll on the value of fund assets.
Standard & Poor’s has placed 80 to 90 per cent of all the mortgage funds, property funds and fund of hedge funds it rates "on hold" this year due to changes in the redemption process.
HFA shares plummeted 55 per cent to 4.3c in local trade yesterday, taking the year’s decline to 98 per cent, after the company said it had stopped allowing withdrawals from the HFA Diversified Investments Fund, the HFA Octane Fund and the HFA Octane Fund Series 2 because of "deteriorating liquidity in underlying investments".
Business Intelligence Middle East – International Tax lawyers are urging private-equity and hedge-fund clients to restructure their partnerships so they can sidestep the higher taxes that president-elect Barack Obama has vowed to impose on their profits.
Obama’s promise to revive a failed 2007 bill forcing executives to pay rates of 35% or more instead of the 15% capital-gains tax has prompted lawyers to advise the firms to take measures such as setting up offshore entities. That would help circumvent higher taxes on so-called carried- interest profits that executives at the firms typically earn.
The lawyers say they are pressing their clients to act before the year’s end on the assumption that any law or regulatory change won’t apply before 2009.
“If you wait to do it, then to unwind or restructure later will be very difficult and trigger significant tax penalties,” said Mike Kosnitzky, who heads Boies Schiller & Flexner’s tax practice in New York and is advising clients.
Sydney Morning Herald – The hedge fund industry says it supports federal government plans to ban naked short selling and impose a disclosure regime for covered short selling.
The Australian arm of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) said the group had been in talks with regulators and the federal government about legislation to go to parliament on Thursday.
But while it supported the naked short selling ban, moves to create greater transparency of covered short selling activity on the Australian stock exchange did not go far enough.
BusinessWeek – Some participants in South Korea’s nascent alternative-investment market have grown pessimistic over the ability of incoming legislation to support the development of an onshore hedge funds industry.
The Capital Markets Consolidation Act will become effective in February. It is a sweeping attempt to give Korea a securities law akin to those in the United Kingdom or Australia, in which financial services are regulated by function rather than by business license, and in which most types of businesses will be thrown open to all kinds of financial institutions. It will allow the development of a universal bank and plenty of cross-selling.
As part of this, the Financial Supervisory Service has been keen to encourage the development of an onshore hedge funds industry. There are a growing number of Korea-focused hedge funds, but nearly all of them operate offshore, in Singapore, Hong Kong or the United States. The government wants to position Seoul as a financial hub for northeast Asia, and has seen how hedge funds have become a vital and welcome part of the milieu in places like Singapore.
Guardian.co.uk – MEPs will call tomorrow for EU legislation to force private equity groups and hedge funds to disclose unprecedented amounts of information about their activities.
The demand for tougher regulation comes as private equity groups are warning that the enduring credit crunch will reduce new money inflows into their funds by up to 30% over the next two years, and mirrors a call from the UK’s largest trade union, Unite, for hedge funds to be forced to demonstrate that their investment strategies are not perpetuating the current market turmoil.
The union, which has put forward an emergency motion to the Labour party conference on the Lloyds TSB takeover of HBOS, is demanding that hedge funds be more transparent, give greater disclosure and must be subject to risk management.
EurActiv – Hedge funds and private equity could be forced to abide by minimum capital requirement rules in future if a report adopted by an influential European Parliament committee becomes EU legislation.
The Parliament’s Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs voted on Wednesday (10 September) in favour of a resolution recommending tougher regulation on hedge funds. The decision was almost unanimous, with just one vote against and one abstention.
The report, drafted by former Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, was negotiated until the last minute by MEPs, with over 200 amendments brought to the original. It is widely expected to be confirmed when it is brought before the Parliament’s plenary for a final vote on 23 September.
Bloomberg – Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC will invest as much as $500 million in projects that bury greenhouse gases blamed for global warming and create tradable emissions credits.
Och-Ziff, the hedge-fund firm run by Daniel Och, also bought 10 percent of the emission credit company Blue Source LLC, chief executive officer Bill Townsend said. Townsend wouldn’t disclose the value of the deal, which closed Aug. 14.
Emissions credits from projects that reduce global warming gases are voluntarily traded in the U.S. by companies and others seeking to enhance their environmental image. Congress is debating legislation that would mandate reductions in greenhouse gases and create a market for emissions credits that utilities and large manufacturers would need to meet pollution targets.
“To us, it’s pretty dramatic,” Townsend said in an interview yesterday. “We think that this will probably fund us for the next three years of investments.”
24/7 Wall St. – On Sunday, T. Boone Pickens issued a press release stating that he had met with Senator Obama in Reno, Nevada to discuss his energy plans. This follows the statement he issued Friday stating that he had met with Senator McCain in Aspen, Colorado to discuss his energy plans.
Pickens calls this non-partisan in both meetings and stressed that the Pickens movement hopes to get legislation passed in the first 100 days of the next administration.
As far as the Obama meeting Pickens stated (among other things): "I shared my feeling of encouragement at the Senator’s willingness to speak out on energy issues recently in the campaign, but told him that there is still much more that needs to be done……. It would be inappropriate for me to speak for Senator Obama. I have a real sense, however, that he was very engaged. He understands the issues and is interested and excited by the work we are doing to educate and involve the people of this great nation."
San Francisco Chronicle- The giant housing rescue plan President Bush signed Wednesday might help stanch the bleeding in the housing market, but experts on both sides of the political divide worry that it is, at best, only an emergency step.
In addition to $300 billion in government guarantees to aid homeowners threatened by foreclosure, the administration got extraordinary new powers to backstop mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac after their stocks plunged earlier this month. The legislation gives both companies an open line of credit at the U.S. Treasury and allows the government to buy the companies’ stock through 2009. In return, the companies get a tough new regulator.
But both firms remain weird hybrid entities whose profits are private but whose losses are public, a recipe for excessive risk-taking. The new law makes the government guarantee explicit, exposing taxpayers to losses that could dwarf the savings & loan bailouts of the 1980s that cost taxpayers $300 billion in today’s dollars.
Biloxi Sun Herald- The Senate voted Tuesday to move ahead with a Democratic plan to curb speculation in oil markets that has been blamed for some of the recent run-up in oil prices.
The 94-0 vote clears a procedural hurdle for the legislation, which would require the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to set limits on trading in oil markets by investors and speculators.
Despite the big tally, however, the rival parties are bitterly divided on how to address high gasoline prices and an underlying stalemate remains in place.
