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Reuters – Traditional long-only mutual funds are set to dominate shareholder registers again as the hedge fund industry shrinks and retail investors continue to stay away, according to Morgan Stanley.
Meanwhile, with institutions, including hedge funds, deleveraging aggressively, emerging markets equity issuance is set to fall to 10 percent of total volume in Europe, Middle East and Africa in 2009 from one quarter this year, the bank told the Reuters Global Finance Summit.
"Traditional classic long-only funds, which used to be the main part of shareholder registrar in the 1990s, will become more important," said Emmanuel Gueroult, head of EMEA equity capital markets.
"The hedge fund industry is deleveraging…Access to credit is difficult."
Forbes – Lobbyists for the $2 trillion hedge fund industry made a last ditch effort Wednesday to convince U.S. securities regulators to let an emergency order prohibiting short selling in more than 950 financial firms expire Thursday.
"The orders have not prevented price declines of financial institutions, volatility in the securities of these firms, or the failure of a financial institution," said Richard Baker, president of hedge fund lobby group Managed Funds Association.
Baker said the emergency orders have increased volatility, reduced liquidity and abruptly halted capital-raising, including through the issuance of convertible securities.
But a number of securities law experts expect the Securities and Exchange Commission to extend the ban beyond Thursday because of the current fragile state of the markets.
Under the SEC emergency measures, short selling in the U.S.-listed financial firms stocks has been prohibited for about two weeks.
Reuters- Former Samsung Group chief Lee Kun-hee, one of South Korea‘s most powerful businessmen, was handed a 3-year suspended jail sentence on Wednesday for tax evasion, but was cleared of other charges.
The court also fined Lee 110 billion won ($109 million), more than double the amount of taxes he evaded, but cleared him of charges of breach of trust and illegal issuance of bonds aimed at transferring wealth to his children.
His jail sentence was suspended for five years.
Analysts and experts had expected Lee to escape prolonged jail time because judges have often been lenient to South Korean corporate leaders convicted of white collar crimes on the basis that putting them behind bars could hurt business.
