Independent - The FTSE 100 Index tumbled more than 200 points today after a weekend of financial turmoil in Europe.

Investors took scant comfort from Friday’s backing […]

Times Online - Who would be in hedge funds right now? Man Group, which has long traded on its name as the world’s largest hedge fund manager, yesterday found the tag something of a liability.
The shares lost 35½p to 398p before a trading update next Monday, making a 46 per cent fall […]

News.com.au - Takeover target Ausdrill has blamed a fall in the company’s share price on hedge fund selling after comments from suitor Macmahon that its bid was unlikely to succeed.
Ausdrill said that it believes selling from hedge funds accounted for the "majority" of the "large number" of shares traded in the belief that Macmahon’s […]

Guardian.co.uk - Four large hedge funds, all shareholders of Huntsman Corp, have proposed a plan to salvage a $6.5 billion buyout of the chemical company by a unit of Apollo Global Management.
But Apollo’s Hexion Specialty Chemicals unit late Thursday rejected the plan, saying Huntsman’s increased debt and decreased earnings since the deal was struck in […]

Reuters - Some bearish option players are betting that Wells Fargo & Co and SunTrust Banks Inc  could both lose as much as 10 to 15 percent of their current stock values by October options expiration.
Nagging worries about the credit markets on Monday have been slamming financial stocks, including banks and brokerage firms.
[…]

New York Post - Corporate raider turned activist investor Carl Icahn is having a tough year.
The Far Rockaway, Queens native’s hedge funds are suffering their first losses since the 72-year-old opened them in 2004. The losing streak, which started midway through 2007, is expected to continue when Icahn Enterprises, the publicly-traded holding company […]

Bloomberg - Just when American International Group Inc. shareholders figured things couldn’t get worse at the world’s largest insurer, profit from the company’s private equity and hedge fund investments is evaporating.
Earnings from so-called alternative holdings were probably close to zero in the second quarter, after soaring 77 percent to $1.02 billion a year earlier, said […]

Guardian Unlimited- Aberdeen Asset Management said on Friday its assets had grown 6 percent despite turbulent markets and had also earmarked higher cost savings to offset falling earnings, pushing its shares up.
The fund manager said its assets under management grew to 113.7 billion pounds ($227.5 billion) in the three months to end-June, from 107.3 […]

Bloomberg- William Ackman put more cash into the $2 billion hedge fund he started to invest in Target Corp. as shares of the second-largest U.S. discount retailer declined 38 percent in the past year, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
Pershing Square Capital Management LP, Ackman’s New York- based firm, added at least […]

Star Tribune- Minneapolis Star Tribune- A terrible year for financial stocks isn’t keeping Ameriprise Financial Inc. from growing. The Minneapolis-based financial planning and insurance company announced Monday that it will acquire the asset management firm J&W Seligman & Co. Inc. for $440 million.
Seligman, based in New York, manages an $18 billion portfolio of mutual funds, […]

Financial Times- A hedge fund manager who made some of the biggest profits from the global credit crisis said on Wednesday there was worse to come as evidence mounted that banks are struggling to regain their earnings power and properly value their assets.
Morgan Stanley said second-quarter profits plunged 60 per cent to $1bn and would […]