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 – Eden Rock Structured Finance has seen its value drop further in 2009, leaving some investors saying they are worried they may get back little of their money in the hedge fund, which is due to be wound up after losses last year.
Lack of foreign exchange hedging pummelled the fund’s asset values by up to 8.5 percent in July, according to preliminary company estimates seen by Reuters.
Reuters – Investors, encouraged by a growing number of acquisitions and public floats in the past few months, are keeping a close eye on a coterie of promising startups in Silicon Valley.
An informal poll of venture capitalists and others pointed to six privately held companies as the ripest for acquisition or readiness to go public, out of 34 cited in industries ranging from alternative energy to social networking.
For now, the Silicon Valley Six say they intend to keep growing rather than agreeing to be acquired or go public during the recession.
Reuters – Opportunistic property investment firm NewRiver Retail said on Monday it would list in September with a capitalisation of 25 million pounds, two months after suspending a planned 250 million pounds float.
NewRiver expects its shares to be admitted to London’s Alternative Investment Market on September 1, it said in a statement. The shares would also be admitted to the Channel Islands Stock Exchange.
Reuters – Kenneth Feinberg, the Obama administration’s pay czar, said on Sunday he has broad and "binding" authority over executive compensation, including the ability to "claw back" money already paid, and he is weighing how and whether to use that power.
Feinberg told Reuters that Citigroup Inc included the contract of energy trader Andrew Hall in submissions due Friday by seven major companies still locked in the federal government’s TARP Program.
Feinberg said he hasn’t looked at Hall’s contract, which reports have said could pay him as much as $100 million this year.
Reuters – New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, probing illegal marketing and sales of auction rate securities (ARS), is likely to file a lawsuit on Monday against Charles Schwab Corp (SCHW.O) for civil fraud, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
As a part of the lawsuit, Cuomo will likely present transcripts of recordings between Schwab brokers and customers that allegedly show how the ARS were misrepresented by brokers as easy-to-sell alternatives to cash, according to the paper.
Reuters – The U.S. Federal Reserve has ordered CIT Group Inc, the cash-strapped corporate lender struggling to avoid bankruptcy, to submit a plan for raising capital and meeting debt obligations within 15 days.
The order from the powerful regulator comes as CIT, which on Monday again warned it may seek bankruptcy protection if debt restructuring efforts fall through, scrambles to line up new financing. CIT’s shares climbed by as much as 19 percent after it announced Wednesday’s order on Thursday.
Reuters UK – Amaranth Advisors, the largest collapsed hedge fund in history, has been ordered to pay $15 million in civil fines for attempting to manipulate natural gas markets, federal agencies said on Wednesday.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission said it settled charges against Amaranth and the fund has been ordered to pay a $7.5 million civil fine.
Reuters – The value of Japanese retail-targeted mutual funds rose to a 10-month high of 58.8 trillion yen ($613 billion) in July, lifted by inflows into international equities funds and strength in share prices, an industry body said on Thursday.
It was the sixth straight month of increases in the value of publicly placed investment trust funds, or "toshins", as signs of a global economic recovery boost investor confidence. The value was also helped by rises in share prices, with the benchmark Nikkei share average .N225 gaining 4 percent in July.
The overall value of publicly placed investment trust funds rose by 1.7 trillion yen or 3 percent from the previous month to 58.8 trillion yen in July, the highest since September, Japan’s Investment Trusts Association said.
Reuters – UBS has named Alastair Sclater to the new post of head of its Singapore prime brokerage, as the Swiss bank aims to build that business in Asia’s second-biggest centre for hedge funds.
Singapore, which competes with rival Asian financial centre Hong Kong, has attracted asset managers, private banks and hedge funds in recent years with tax incentives and strict secrecy rules.
The city-state also provides investors the opportunity to manage part of the more than $300 billion in assets held by its sovereign wealth funds GIC and Temasek.
Reuters – European shares closed lower on Tuesday in response to disappointing U.S. economic data, with banking and commodity stocks weighing the most on the main index.
”We have had a couple of macro figures which did not please the market. The U.S. labour costs and productivity figures are worrying … they simply mean that there are enormous constraints on the consumer who are supposed to bail us all out of this,” said Heino Ruland, strategist at Ruland Research.
”Industry is just slashing costs all over the place … it means final demand may not be strong enough,” he said.
Reuters – European private equity firms are keen to start bringing their best-performing portfolio companies to market, encouraged by early successes on the other side of the Atlantic.
Last week KKR successfully listed semiconductor business Avago Technologies Ltd and is considering listing a number of other companies as markets warm to new arrivals.
”It is not clear yet whether there will be an IPO window but we believe that there may be an opportunity for strong resilient businesses to float in the first half of next year,” said Kurt Bjoerklund, co-managing partner of Permira.
