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Bloomberg - Artradis Fund Management Pte, RAB Capital Plc’s Northwest unit and Cannizaro (Hong Kong) Ltd. are cutting fees and locking up investors’ money for longer in new hedge funds that will buy bonds after prices fell in Asia.
Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prime brokerage unit has been approached by at least eight money managers about starting such funds in Asia to buy beaten-up fixed-income securities such as convertible bonds, said Eddie Guillemette, the firm’s regional co-head of global markets financing and services. Some of the hedge fund managers are offering to reduce management and performance-based fees by as much as 50 percent, he said.
“You’ve got people who are now setting up vehicles with long lockups to take advantage of distressed or stressed asset classes where the pricing is now at a multidecade level of cheapness,” said Richard Johnston, Hong Kong-based Asia head of hedge fund consulting firm Albourne Partners Ltd. The UBS Convertible Asia ex-Japan Index is down 37 percent in dollar terms this year.
Bloomberg - Asia hedge-fund closures jumped 19 percent this year, with the industry set to shrink for the first time as clients withdraw more money after funds in the region underperformed rivals in the U.S. and Europe.
“It is likely that we’ll see a net reduction in the number of Asian hedge funds through this current year,” Peter Douglas, principal of Singapore-based hedge fund consulting firm GFIA Pte, said in an interview yesterday. “Almost without exception, the managers that we talk to in Asia are seeing capital outflows, some of it is minor, some of it major.”
About 70 hedge funds in Asia have shut down as of August, an increase from 59 in the first eight months of last year, according to Eurekahedge. There are 618 Asia-focused managers managing 1,199 hedge funds, compared with 1,196 funds in December. Assets under management fell to $168 billion in August, from $176 billion at the end of 2007, according to the Singapore-based hedge fund research and publishing company.
Asia’s hedge-fund managers — more than half of whom trade only equities — have underperformed their U.S. and European counterparts whose more diverse strategies allowed them to profit from turmoil in financial markets. Asia’s hedge-fund average returns fell 12.6 percent this year, compared with declines of 0.1 percent in North America and 5.8 percent in Europe, Eurekahedge said. Asia gained 18 percent in 2007, outperforming both regions.
Washington Post - When the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an emergency order last month protecting the stocks of the country’s largest financial institutions against a form of short selling, three businessmen saw an opportunity.
Harvey Pitt, SEC chairman from 2001 to 2003 and chief executive of District-based global consulting firm Kalorama Partners, teamed up with John Tabacco, chief executive of LocateStock.com, and Tom Ronk, the chief executive of Buyins.net, to launch RegSHO.com.
The D.C. company operates a Web-based, real-time electronic stock lending and location service that provides tools to help sellers and brokerage firms comply with SEC rules governing naked short selling — the practice the agency sought to prevent — and regular short sales of stocks. The Web site matches traders with available stocks that can be borrowed for short sales and offers immediate data on the short-sell market. It is named after the SEC’s order regulating such trades, Regulation SHO.
CNNMoney.com- An equity investors study by Greenwich Associates showed trading volume generated by hedge funds surpassed mutual funds last year and now ranks second only to traditional asset-management shops.
The financial-consulting firm said the influence of hedge funds as a way of generating equity trading has helped Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER) and other firms " solidify" their standing as top U.S. brokers in terms of market share.
"Although the second half of 2007 was something of a wild ride, hedge-fund performance for the year was relatively strong, and from a U.S. equity trading perspective, hedge funds were extremely active," said Greenwich consultant John Feng.