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.
The Associated Press – Relations between President Barack Obama and U.S. corporate leaders have grown tense in recent weeks, with business groups bristling over his sharp rebukes of lenders and multinational companies in particular.
Executives and trade groups that praised Obama’s outreach during his post-election transition period say they have felt less welcome since he took office in January. More troubling, they say, are his populist-tinged, sometimes acid critiques of certain sectors, including large companies that keep some profits overseas to reduce their U.S. tax burden.
On Thursday in New Mexico, Obama chastised the credit card industry for sharply raising interest rates or fees with hard-to-find notice. He said consumers should be protected from "all kinds of harsh penalties and fees that you never knew about." Some of the dealings by credit card companies, he said, "are not honest."
FOXBusiness – U.K. life insurance and pensions provider Aviva said Wednesday that it’s agreed with a policyholder advocate that a reattribution offer can be put to policyholders.
The offer gives policyholders in two with-profits funds the right to choose whether to receive a payment now or keep their right to uncertain future payouts.
Alibaba News Channel – Investors generally put aside recent worries about the world economy and banking industry woes on Thursday, sending global stocks higher and reversing safety flows into the Japanese yen.
Mixed earnings plagued European markets, however, with Credit Suisse posting better-than-expected profits and engineering group ABB missing forecasts and giving a cautious outlook.
Euro zone purchasing managers provided the latest "green shoots" data to suggest some economic recovery. They signalled stabilisation in their sectors but also record job losses.
Moneycontrol.com – Joseph Stiglitz, a professor at the Columbia University and the 2001 Nobel Prize winner, said the US government’s bailout packages designed for financial institutions may not work. “It is a peculiarly-structured programme,” Stiglitz said, “The government puts in 92% of the money, the private sector walks away with 50% of the profits and the government absorbs almost all the losses. What kind of partnership is that?”
The Nobel Prize winner said the financial system in the US engaged in too much risk-taking. “If you are a bank too big to fail, you have a one-sided bet. If you win, you walk off with the profit. If you lose, you are too big to fail, so the government picks up the losses.
New York Times – William A. Ackman makes a lot of noise for someone in the hush-hush business of hedge funds. He harangues executives, goads boards, talks this stock up and that one down — all in search of profit.
On Thursday, someone listened. After a campaign by Mr. Ackman that had lasted for months, one of the nation’s largest operators of shopping malls, General Growth Properties, filed for bankruptcy protection.
Now Mr. Ackman, who runs a hedge fund called Pershing Square Capital Management, is positioning his fund to pick up the pieces. Pershing controls 25 percent of General Growth and will play a crucial role in restructuring the company. If Mr. Ackman gets his way, he and his investors could walk off with hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
Bloomberg – Compensation for U.S. hedge-fund employees may drop as much as 25 percent this year as the firms try to recoup last year’s investment losses.
The decline will cut hedge-fund paychecks to about half the record levels of 2007, according to estimates by Alan Johnson, founder of Johnson Associates Inc., a New York-based compensation-consulting firm whose clients include financial- services companies.
About 70 percent of the industry’s 6,800 so-called single- manager funds lost money in 2008 with the average fund dropping 19 percent, according to data compiled by Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. That means most clients don’t have to pay performance fees — generally 20 percent of profits — until the losses are made up. Many owners of the private partnerships will cover salaries out of their own pockets, or from pools set aside in previous years, to keep their best employees, Johnson said.
Interactive Investor – British fund firm Ashmore Group said it expected the fund-raising environment to remain tough in 2009 as clients continue to cash in investments, after it reported first half profits in line with forecasts.
The group, which specialises in managing emerging market funds, said on Tuesday it sees significant opportunities arising from the turmoil that has hit financial markets, though so far this year it has lost money on its investments. The group said pretax profit for the six months to end-December fell to 80.3 million pounds ($116.9 million) from 100.9 million a year before.
Assets under management fell 34 percent to $24.6 billion during the period as the group suffered net outflows of $5.8 billion and investment losses of $7.1 billion.
MSN Money UK – Northern Rock was the darling of the UK mortgage sector, but fuelled its rapid growth by borrowing in money markets and selling on its mortgage debts rather than customer deposits.
The eruption of the credit crunch in August 2007 as banks clamped down on risks shattered its business model and forced it to seek emergency aid from the Bank of England.
Reuters – A hedge fund manager, a brokerage trader and a financial adviser were charged on Thursday with insider trading in the stock of supermarket chain Albertsons Inc, reaping total profits of about $7.5 million, according to court documents.
The criminal complaints were filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against Joseph Contorinis, a former employee at Jefferies Asset Management LLC, as well as trader Michael Koulouroudis and financial adviser Nicos Achillea Stephanou, whose employers were not immediately known.
Jefferies was not mentioned in the complaint against Contorinis. Firm spokesman Tom Tarrant said Contorinis left a year ago. He declined to comment on the charge or arrest of Contorinis by the FBI on Thursday.
MIGHT two-and-twenty become one-and-ten? Since 1990 the number of hedge funds has grown by 14 times to over 7,000, but abundance has not lowered prices. Funds typically still charge clients a management fee of 2% of assets and 20% of any profits above a given hurdle. Rough calculations suggest that in the boom year of 2007, hedge funds globally received $33 billion in management fees alone—roughly equivalent to the bonus pool paid by Wall Street’s securities industry.
That may now be changing. The average hedge fund lost 18% during 2008, according to Hedge Fund Research, an analysis firm. Assets fell by a quarter, reflecting both losses and client redemptions, which are expected to accelerate. To prevent fire sales, perhaps a third of funds have restricted client withdrawals. Giving clients temporary fee cuts has helped sweeten this pill.
WalesOnline – Last week saw the return of the credit crunch’s bogey product: short selling.
The practice was banned by the Financial Services Authority last September after it was blamed for wiping millions off the value of bank shares, betting as it did that prices would fall as the recession bit deeper.
At the end of Friday last week, on the day of its re-introduction, a familiar pattern had re-emerged. Barclays closed down some 25% (although the bank reported that its profits would be “well ahead” of the £5.3bn predicted by some forecasts), while RBS fell by 13%.
Daily Herald – Year after year, the hedge fund industry dazzled Wall Street by delivering "absolute returns" – outsized profits whether markets rose or fell. Using sophisticated trading models, the pools of managed capital made wealthy people wealthier with eye-popping returns that carried seemingly moderate risk.
Not these days. Blind-sided by a colossal market collapse and the widening Bernard Madoff scandal, hedge funds suffered their worst showing on record last year. And they’re bracing for more pain in 2009. The industry’s fall proves that even the quantitative brilliance and market wizardry of elite hedge funds are no magic bullet for investors during brutal times.
