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.
Bloomberg – Dalton Investments LLC, the Los Angeles-based hedge fund with 70 percent of its assets in Japan, is starting a 50 billion yen ($550 million) fund that will invest in U.S. distressed assets, taking advantage of low prices.
The fund has raised about 10 billion yen from U.S. investors and will begin marketing in Japan by the end of March, said Junichiro Sano, chief executive officer of Dalton’s local unit. It will invest in bonds sold by U.S. companies that once had AAA ratings and have since been downgraded below investment grade, aiming to profit from the high yields on the debt.
Dalton, co-founded by James Rosenwald and Steven D. Persky in 1998, aims to raise its assets under management after they fell 23 percent to about 100 billion yen this year amid the biggest financial market losses since the Great Depression. Global financial institutions have posted about $989 billion in writedowns and credit losses linked to the U.S. mortgage market collapse, pushing corporate bond yields higher.
Globe and Mail – Hedge fund manager Eric Sprott heaps praise on his "defensive team" for helping him survive this bear market.
While some of his peers have cratered amid this year’s stock market crash, his short positions have kept him well ahead of his benchmark index.
For the first 11 months of this year, the returns of Sprott Bull/Bear RSP and Sprott Hedge LP I and II range from an 8.5-per-cent gain to a 4.5-per-cent loss compared with the S&P/TSX composite’s sharp 33-per-cent slide.
"The reason we started our first Canadian hedge fund in 2000 was because we foresaw this very, very difficult market," recalls Mr. Sprott, also chief executive officer of Toronto-based Sprott Inc.
Bloomberg – During the height of the financial crisis in late September, some of Barack Obama’s campaign advisers pushed him in a conference call to distance himself from Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chief executive officer, they warned, was too close to President George W. Bush and Wall Street.
Obama, 47, rejected the idea. At one point, he talked to Paulson everyday for two weeks.
As the president-elect faces a once-in-a-century opportunity to remake the regulatory apparatus governing Wall Street, some of Obama’s fellow Democrats and investor groups are urging him to bring sweeping changes to banks, hedge funds and executive pay. His closest economic advisers, men like Robert Rubin, Lawrence Summers and Paul Volcker, may recommend otherwise: go slow. If Obama takes their counsel, the 44th president, who succeeds Bush on Jan. 20, may not clamp down all that hard on a financial industry whose excesses have pushed the nation — and much of the world — into a recession.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Receivables Exchange, the world’s first online marketplace for real-time trading of accounts receivable, today announced that it has launched its proprietary patent-pending trading platform to conduct live trading of accounts receivable.
“The Receivables Exchange is a phenomenal idea that has hit the asset based finance industry by storm,” said Michael Scanlon, Managing Director of HedgeCo.net and Member of the Board for The Hedge Fund Association. “Through its centralized, transparent marketplace, it is transforming an industry that has long been based on one-to-one relationships, effectively making the sale of commercial receivables a completely transparent and globally competitive marketplace.”
At The Receivables Exchange, U.S. businesses (Sellers) are able to increase their cash flow and free up their working capital by having their outstanding receivables bid on in real-time by a global network of institutional investors (Buyers).
“The Receivables Exchange was founded on the fundamental belief that America’s small and mid-sized businesses should have better access to working capital,” said Justin Brownhill, co-founder and chief executive officer of The Receivables Exchange. “In today’s credit crisis, we’re hearing from CEOs and CFOs across the country that the need has never been greater for them to identify alternative funding sources to reinvest into their businesses in order to maintain their success.”
Companies of all sizes – from under $10 million to over $150 million – have been signing up to use their receivables to accelerate cash flow. Members span a diverse range of dozens of industries, including manufacturing, technology, transportation, distribution and staffing – all realizing the strategic advantage of monetizing their accounts receivable, particularly in today’s troubling credit crunch.
Commercial banks, hedge funds and asset-based lenders can take advantage of the centralized, competitive marketplace to realize a stable, high growth investment opportunity.
“The Receivables Exchange allows us to extend our asset-based finance investment strategies to include short-term receivables,” said Sam Adams, managing director of Cedar Lane, a New York based asset based hedge fund. “The Exchange offers a unique opportunity to obtain returns better than money-market but with shorter tenures than the traditional entertainment and media loan positions in our funds’ portfolios. Through The Receivables Exchange platform we can invest funds on a short-term basis to a qualified pool of Sellers at a more attractive rate of return than cash alternatives without diverging from our investment strategy.”
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New York Times – Several leading hedge fund managers told Congress on Thursday they support some new regulation of hedge funds and the complex derivative securities that are partly blamed for the global financial crisis.
But they advocated only the lightest supervision of their industry, and said they would be willing to disclose their secretive trading activities to regulators only with a guarantee the information would not be released to the public. One executive claimed that requiring hedge funds to publicly disclose their proprietary trading strategies would be like requiring Coca-Cola Co. to reveal to competitors its proprietary recipe for Coke.
"Proper regulation is critical, but the best regulation is created with an eye toward unleashing opportunities, not limiting possibilities," said Citadel Investment Group Chief Executive Officer Kenneth C. Griffin. "We must solve the serious issues we face but in a way that does not stifle the best innovative qualities of our financial markets."
Financial Standard – As the GFC batters confidence in long-only equities, sentiment is turning to hedge funds, provided you partner with groups that are reputable and well run, said Spencer Young, chief executive officer of HFA Holdings.
The result is institutional investors are looking to steer money towards hedge funds as they seek a safe haven for their capital, said Young.
"While investors in traditional long-only funds have lost around 40 per cent of their invested capital in the year to date, the hedge fund industry has recorded average losses of less than half that amount – around 18 per cent – and proven its long-term value," he said.
Young said several major consultancy groups are now forecasting institutional investors to tip more money into the hedge fund sector as they re-evaluate their strategies following the global market melt-down.
Bloomberg – Deephaven Capital Management LLC, the hedge-fund unit of stockbroker Knight Capital Group Inc., froze a $1.6 billion fund after investors asked to get back 30 percent of their money.
Withdrawals from the Deephaven Global Multistrategy Fund were suspended so managers wouldn’t be forced to sell assets in falling stock and debt markets, the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based firm said yesterday in a letter to investors. Lenders and trading partners also imposed stricter financing requirements, according to the letter.
Deephaven Global, which trades a variety of securities including bonds and commodities, follows RAB Capital Plc, Ore Hill Partners LLC and Highland Capital Management LP in limiting withdrawals amid the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The fund lost 15 percent this year through September, and Deephaven estimated it has fallen an additional 10 percent this month. The fund has returned an average of 16 percent annually since opening in 1994.
“This level of redemptions in the current market environment forces the question of whether such redemptions can be processed in the ordinary course without disadvantaging both continuing and later redeeming investors,” said the letter, signed by Colin Smith, Deephaven’s chief executive officer .
Globe and Mail – Epic Capital Management Inc. is closing its flagship hedge fund in what could be the precursor to a number of shutdowns in the troubled industry.
The Toronto firm’s assets tumbled from $300-million to $200-million as markets crashed and investors asked for their money, leading the managers to decide that giving remaining investors in Epic Limited Partnership their cash back was the prudent move, said founder and chief executive officer David Fawcett.
Epic focused on finding underpriced mid-sized Canadian companies, but that strategy couldn’t protect the firm from the market meltdown. Epic’s main fund has fallen about 43 per cent so far this year.
"We wanted to do it while we could and didn’t have a gun to our head," said Mr. Fawcett, who added that he expects a "pretty orderly unwind."
Bloomberg - Morgan Stanley Chief Executive Officer John Mack said tumbling markets may drive some hedge funds out of business, prompting his firm to “resize.”
“Friends in that community say that by year-end, you’ll see the number of firms in the hedge-fund area shrink, I’ve heard as large as 30 percent,” Mack, 63, told CNBC today. As the industry contracts, “we need to resize our prime brokerage,” he said.
Morgan Stanley’s prime brokerage unit, which lost clients last month after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. fueled a global bank crisis, is regaining some customers since sealing a $9 billion investment from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., Mack said.
“Funds that took some of their money, in some cases all their money, are coming back,” he said. “Without question those people who pulled out are coming back.”
Bloomberg – Investors withdrew a record $43 billion from hedge funds in September as they fled distressed-securities and stock funds because of poor performance, TrimTabs Investment Research said today.
The estimated outflows were the most since TrimTabs started tracking the industry in 2000, Chief Executive Officer Charles Biderman said in an interview. Investors pulled $14.4 billion from funds focused on troubled securities and $8.4 billion from equity long-short funds, which bet on rising and falling stocks, the Sausalito, California-based company said in a statement.
“We’re told from some of our clients that most of the hedge funds have sold enough equities to cover the redemptions,” Biderman said. “There shouldn’t be more forced selling.”
Bloomberg – Credit markets have fallen so far that they are providing a "once in a lifetime opportunity," and investors are still selling.
Prices of loans rated below investment grade declined to a record low 66.1 cents on the dollar, virtually guaranteeing investors get their money back, based on historical recovery rates, according to data compiled by Standard & Poor’s. Yields on corporate bonds show investors expect 5.6 percent of the market will go bust, the highest default rate since the Great Depression, according to Christopher Garman, chief executive officer of debt research firm Garman Research LLC in Orinda, California.
While central banks injected $3 trillion into the global economy, credit markets are tumbling because banks are clamping down on lending, forcing investors to unload assets they bought with borrowed money. The Federal Reserve said Aug. 11 that its quarterly survey shows most "domestic institutions reported having tightened their lending standards and terms."
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Hedge Fund provider GlobeOp Financial Services S.A. published its Interim Management Statement covering the period since 30 June 2008. As a group, GlobeOp’s clients appear to have out-performed the industry.
"I am pleased to report that we have continued to grow revenues and Assets under Administration (to US$108 billion at 30 September 2008 from $104 billion at 30 June 2008) against a background of turbulent markets and a challenging environment for our clients," Hans Hufschmid, Chief Executive Officer, said, "the three-month period to September has been the strongest quarter this year for fund launches from new clients as well as launches from existing clients. In addition, similar to the first half of 2008, client funds grew organically during the period.
Preliminary data show performance for September of approximately -3% (which includes any exposure to Lehman Brothers) and year-to-date clients show negative returns of around -5.5%. This contrasts positively with performance reports from the Barclays Hedge Fund index and the HFRX index which both show year to date returns of more than -11% through September.
In the three months prior to Lehman Brothers insolvency, GlobeOp used GoCredit to identify and assess specific exposures. As a result, clients terminated or re-assigned over half of their Lehman Brothers positions, reducing their initial margin posted with Lehman by approximately $180 million.
GlobeOp provides administration services to over 180 clients representing hundreds of distinct hedge funds with total assets of $108 billion. Established in 2000, GlobeOp today serves over 180 clients worldwide, representing $108 billion in assets under administration (AuA). With headquarters in London and New York, GlobeOp employs more than 1,800 people on three continents; offices are also located in Dublin, Ireland; George Town, Cayman Islands; Harrison, NY and Hartford, CT, U.S.A.; and Mumbai (Bombay), India.
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