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 – Investment adviser MAG Capital and its owner settled U.S. regulators’ claims that it took warrants from three hedge funds it advised without compensating them, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday.
The Los Angeles-based investment adviser and owner David Firestone, without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations, will pay $100,000 and $50,000, respectively, to settle the SEC’s complaint.
On 44 separate occasions, between 2003 and 2006, MAG took warrants from its clients without compensating their funds for them, the SEC said.
According to the SEC, MAG’s hedge fund clients made investments in so-called private investment in public equity (PIPE) transactions.
The PIPE transactions included warrants and other securities. The hedge funds paid for the warrants as part of the bundle of securities sold by the issuers in the transaction.
However, MAG took a portion of the warrants in each transaction and did not compensate the hedge funds for the warrants it took, the SEC alleged.
Universities and schools put more money into alternative investments like hedge funds in fiscal 2008, researchers reported on Tuesday.
The Commonfund Institute, a group that polled 628 educational endowments on their investment tastes, found their appetite for alternatives increased slightly in fiscal 2008 after having fallen off modestly in fiscal 2007. The fiscal year runs through the end of June 2008.
"With public equity markets declining sharply," the researchers said, "the long-term trend for alternative asset strategies to capture a greater share of educational institutions’ investment portfolios continued in fiscal year 2008."
Seeking Alpha – Jana was recently ranked 79th in Alpha’s Hedge Fund Rankings. Jana was founded in 2001 and typically employs activist, market neutral, and long/short equity strategies in public equity markets. Rosenstein received his B.S. from Lehigh University and his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Jana has returned 20.9% each year annualized from 2001 until 2007. Rosenstein sees Jana’s future in a strategy that uses management adjustments to force change at companies, which in turn can send shares higher.
A few months back in our hedge fund performance numbers update, we noted that Jana’s piranha fund was -19.2% for October and was -21.7% for the year at that time. Additionally, their Nirvana fund fell 13.2% in October and was down 21.9% ytd at that time. Lastly, the Jana Partners fund had a much better October than its other funds, being down 6.6% for that month, but was still down 20.4% for the year at that time. As you can see, a big chunk of its losses came solely from the month of October.
