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.
New York Times – Despite the industry’s record losses in 2008, hedge funds generally aren’t lowering their fees without concessions from investors, such as longer lock-up periods and commitments of at least $100 million, money managers and consultants tell Bloomberg News.
While Larry Powell, deputy investment chief for the $16 billion Utah Retirement Systems, could crow at a June industry dinner in New York that more than half of Utah’s 40 hedge-fund managers agreed to changes in their fees, with four adopting his recommendations, top-performing managers haven’t adjusted yesteryear’s top-dollar fees, Bloomberg says.
Reuters – Rumours of an acquisition spree by Fortress Investment Group are greatly exaggerated and may disappoint investors who jumped into the stock during the past week.
The private equity and hedge fund giant last week named director and former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Daniel Mudd as its new CEO. The move frees co-founder Wesley Edens and his partners to focus on buying assets and companies made cheap by what he calls the "Great Deleveraging" of the past year.
Last week, the Financial Times reported Edens told employees during a meeting that Mudd would spearhead the firm’s acquisition efforts.
Bloomberg – Larry Powell, deputy investment chief for the $16 billion Utah Retirement Systems, was convinced in January that hedge funds finally would buckle under the pressure of record losses in 2008 and lower their fees.
He figured it was appropriate to insist on a reduction in the standard industry charge of 2 percent of assets and 20 percent of gains on investments as low as $25 million, according to a memo Powell circulated with hedge funds and investors. Performance fees should be assessed only after a minimum return is exceeded and paid over several years rather than annually, he said.
Bloomberg – Hedge fund managers gathering in Monaco this week said they have work to do to regain investors’ confidence after the industry’s record losses last year.
“We have to prove as an industry that we can provide absolute returns again,” Pierre Lagrange, co-founder of hedge fund GLG Partners Inc., told some of the 750 delegates at the GAIM International hedge fund conference in Monte Carlo. “We have to show that in the next year or two we can strike back.”
Hedge funds tumbled 19 percent in 2008, the worst year since Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. began keeping records almost two decades ago, prompting investors to pull money, and funds to shut or impose limits on withdrawals. Funds have started to rebound this year, rising 9.4 percent through May, according to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index.
June 16 (Bloomberg) — Arvind Raghunathan , former head of Deutsche Bank AG’s global arbitrage business, will open his new hedge-fund firm next month with more than $1 billion, a sign that investors are trickling back after record losses last year.
Roc Capital Management LP’s assets will include $500 million in a separate account from Deutsche Bank, according to people familiar with the New York-based firm, who asked not to be identified because the information is private. It’s the largest hedge-fund startup this year, one of at least eight expected to raise more than $250 million each, according to brokers who provide credit and lend securities to managers.
The ventures are being set up by executives who left banks that scaled back trading to conserve capital, or hedge funds whose 2008 losses will limit bonuses for at least another year. Investors see them as an opportunity to get in early with the next George Soros or Paul Tudor Jones, who have outperformed rivals for most of their careers.
Bloomberg – FRM Capital Advisors Ltd., a unit of London-based asset manager Financial Risk Management Ltd., plans to make as much as $300 million of strategic investments in hedge funds this year, including its first in Asia.
FRM Capital may invest in six more managers in 2009, with two expected by June and its first Asian deal in the third quarter, Chief Operating Officer Patric de Gentile-Williams said. The London-based company makes strategic investments in hedge funds for two to four years in exchange for a share of their fee incomes for as long as 10 years.
Record losses and redemptions have cut hedge funds’ assets and fee revenue, making them more reliant on so-called seeders like FRM Capital. Some investment banks, insurers and private equity houses have exited the hedge fund seeding business amid the credit crisis, said de Gentile-Williams.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Target Corp. asked shareholders yesterday to reject a proposed slate of directors nominated by Pershing Square Capital head William Ackman. Ackman’s hedge fund, who holds a 7.8 percent stake in the discount retailer, is continuing his proxy fight in an effort to boost stock prices and investor returns.
Ackman has suggested selling the land underneath Target locations, prompting the company to warn shareholders against his “risky agenda.”
“Ownership of the land under our stores and distribution centers allows Target to benefit from the value that we create on those sites, and provides necessary flexibility to make significant improvements to our stores to drive our strategy and protect our brand,” Target said in its regulatory filing yesterday.
Hedge fund Pershing Square IV, which is invested solely in Target, rose almost 50% last month after posting record losses last year. Earlier this year, Ackman told investors they could withdraw as much of their capital as they wanted, after the fund plummeted 90 percent. He threw in $25 million of his own money to help pay clients back.
On Monday, Pershing Square proposed a slate of five candidates to the board, all of whom claim to have the retail experience necessary for the company to succeed. Meanwhile, Target is hoping the shareholders will ignore the hedge fund’s advances and instead elect their proposed slate of four.
Ackman’s candidates for the board include himself, Richard Vague, a former bank executive, former Starbucks CEO Jim Donald, Ronald Gilson, a law professor, and Michael Ashner, CEO of Winthrop Realty Trust.
“We believe Pershing Square’s sizable derivative positions create an incentive to favor risk-taking to affect short-term share price performance, even if it harms Target in the long run,” Target added.
Target shares jumped 5.27 percent today in morning trading to $39.58. Shares are still recovering from their tumble in 2008, when they reached almost $60 in September.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
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Reuters – Highbridge Capital Management, the hedge fund majority-owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co, received $1 billion in net inflows this year, the Financial Times reported citing people familiar with the fund.
The inflows suggest that investors are tentatively returning to hedge funds after a dismal 2008 that saw record losses and withdrawals, the paper said in a report posted on it website.
Bloomberg – Hedge-fund assets will likely drop by about $192 billion this quarter after the industry posted record losses in 2008, according to estimates by UBS AG.
Global assets will likely fall to $1.215 trillion in the first quarter, said Timothy Bell, London-based head of hedge- funds advisory at UBS’s wealth management unit. Hedge-fund investors withdrew a record $152 billion in the fourth quarter, pushing industry assets to $1.407 trillion at the end of 2008, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.
“That trend is going to keep going certainly till the end of this first quarter,” Bell told reporters in Singapore today. “Trust will be reestablished by mid-year, provided the hedge fund industry does what it’s meant to do; January was a shining example of the lack of correlation.”
Bloomberg – Hedge funds posted their first back- to-back gain in eight months in January, rebounding from record losses in 2008 as North American managers benefited from betting stocks would fall, an industry report showed.
The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index, which tracks more than 2,000 funds worldwide, gained 0.5 percent last month, extending the 0.8 percent advance in December, according to preliminary data compiled by Eurekahedge Pte. Last time the index rose for two months in a row was in April and May 2008. The January advance contrasts with the 8.9 percent slide by the MSCI World Index of stocks in developed markets.
Bloomberg - Philip Duff, Morgan Stanley’s former chief financial officer, last month fired 80 of the 100 people at his 11-month-old hedge fund, and now he’s looking to sublet excess office space in Greenwich, Connecticut.
Record losses and terminations at hedge funds like Duff Capital Advisors have reduced Connecticut’s tax revenue, and that means the city schools in Bridgeport, 25 miles north, may soon have less space. Facing an anticipated $12 million drop in state aid, Superintendent John Ramos says he may close some of his 35 schools.
Officials across the state face similar cuts. After income- tax-fueled surpluses that totaled $3.6 billion from 2004 through last year, Connecticut’s budget now has a $1.1 billion gap, according to state Comptroller Nancy Wyman. The deficit is forecast to grow by $6 billion by 2011. Quarterly taxes on bonuses and capital gains — which make up 40 percent of income tax collections — dropped 20 percent in one year to $568.2 million last month, Governor Jodi Rell said.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - In a letter scheduled to be released today, January 26th, Bill Gates is offering insight to the world both about the current financial crisis as well as what his foundation has been able to do despite it.
Matthew Bishop, New York Bureau Chief and American Business Editor for The Economist conducted the interview, where Gates said his foundation’s assets may be shrinking, but it is increasing its giving in 2009, from $3.3 billion last year to $3.8 billion—the biggest ever annual budget for a charitable foundation.
Much of this will go towards finding ways to reduce deaths from the 20 diseases that kill the most people in poor countries, according to the Economist. Gates has high hopes that the number of children who die each year can be cut by half, to 5m, within 20 years, just as it was cut by half in the past half-century. Polio will soon be eradicated, he believes, and deaths from malaria can fall by half by 2015.
In a year of economic distress and record losses, optimism and generosity are still central to Gates, he says in the interview. With projected increases in giving in 2009, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will continue to focus on healthcare issues around the world as well as education reforms.
Similarly, he says he is optimistic that Barack Obama’s administration will make progress on school reform, pointing to the extra spending on schools contained in Obama’s economic stimulus package and the fact that the new education secretary, Arne Duncan, welcomed Gates-funded charter schools in Chicago.
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