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 – Abax Global Capital Ltd., a Hong Kong-based hedge fund manager backed by Morgan Stanley, plans to start a private equity fund in China that invests in companies making environmentally friendly products such as clean energy.
The yuan-denominated fund aims to raise about 500 million yuan ($73 million) from Chinese investors by its first close in two months, Donald Yang, Abax’s Hong Kong-based president, said in a phone interview Aug. 21. It will be sponsored by a large Chinese financial institution, whose name he declined to reveal because of pending regulatory reviews of the plan.
BP Capital Management’s second quarter SEC filing shows that the hedge fund manager is focusing solely on energy companies these days. While the firm’s founder and Chief Investment Officer T. Boone Pickens has been publically supporting clean energy technologies, his stock portfolio suggests that he is still a strong believer in dirty energy. After selling-out of its basic materials sector holdings, the fund now holds 100% of its portfolio in the energy sector, specifically oil and natural gas companies.
BP Capital’s top holding, offshore oil drilling and exploration company Transocean Inc, was trimmed over the quarter by 125,000 shares / $9.2mm.
Caribbean Net News – The trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s business told a judge that two Cayman Islands and Bermuda hedge-fund firms accused of profiting from the fraud are ignoring his lawsuits seeking a total of $230.7 million in damages.
Trustee Irving Picard on Wednesday asked the US Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan to file default notices against the Cayman Islands-based Primeo Fund and Bermuda-based Alpha Prime Fund Ltd., court papers show. Two offshore firms sued earlier for a total of $1.2 billion also have ignored Picard’s lawsuits.
Bloomberg – A Biovail Corp. lawsuit against SAC Capital Management LLC was thrown out by a New Jersey judge for failing to state a claim.
Biovail accused hedge funds including SAC and Sigma Capital Management of conspiring in a short-selling scheme to drive down the drugmaker’s share price. The Mississauga, Ontario-based company also claimed Gradient Analytics Inc. helped the hedge funds by writing false reports about Biovail.
“Biovail fails to elicit any specific damages, and instead relies upon a general diminution theory,” New Jersey Superior Court Judge Donald Goldman wrote in a 51-page ruling released today. “Biovail’s claims must be dismissed.”
Baltimore Business Journal – Former Aether Systems CEO David Oros has launched a $3 million hedge fund called Global Domain Vector Fund LLC, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Oros is managing director and chief administrative officer of Baltimore’s Global Domain Partners LLC. He is joined by Jonathan Caplis, a director at Global Domain, as a managing member of the hedge fund, the filing says.
The fund was incorporated in 2005 and its first sale took place April 1, according to the Aug. 19 filing. It is accepting a minimum of $500,000 from outside investors.
New York Times Blogs – Sure, it’s tough being a journalist these days. But if you think the news business is in trouble, try being a journalist turned financier. Some of the reporters who have left their ink-stained professions for the high-paying world of finance haven’t had it easy either.
The latest is Rob Speyer, scion of the Tishman Speyer real-estate empire. As the WSJ reported on Wednesday, a former reporter at The New York Observer and New York Daily News, Speyer is being groomed to take over the New York real estate firm, which recently defaulted on debt tied to a big portfolio of office buildings it bought in Washington, D.C. The firm also is under stress from its top-of-the-market purchase of Archstone Smith, a high-end-apartment landlord, and the Manhattan apartment complexes of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town. Speyer tells the WSJ that despite some problems, Tishman Speyer has a “good track record” and $2 billion in liquidity.
HedgeTracker – The top solar hedge fund investor is Lee Ainslie’s Maverick Capital. Mr. Ainslie is a “Tiger Cub,” or a former protégé of Julian Robertson of Tiger Management. As of Q1 ’09, the fund had $180.33mm of its $5,529mm, or 3.26% of its portfolio, invested in solar. However, Maverick Capital is not necessarily a believer in the solar sector overall, as the firm’s solar exposure is entirely concentrated in First Solar Inc. (FSLR) with 1,358,902 shares. Notably, over the first quarter, the firm purchased $85.29mm or 642,756 shares of FSLR.
HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) added the Cayman Islands to its ‘white list’ of jurisdictions that substantially implement international tax standards.
The Cayman Islands recognition came about after the country signed its twelfth Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with New Zealand, on 13 August 2009.
“For over four decades the Cayman Islands has steadily earned its place as a world-class international financial services centre." Leader of Government Business/Premier Designate, the Honourable McKeeva Bush said, "The Cayman Islands Government sees the OECD’s recognition as a natural outcome of the country’s substantial commitment to uphold an equally world-class international cooperation regime in the exchange of tax information.”
Jeffrey Owens, Director of the OECD’s Centre for Tax Policy and Administration, welcomed the signing which puts Cayman Islands “alongside other countries that have substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard.”
The Cayman Islands’ maintains 12 bilateral tax information arrangements with the following countries: Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States.
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HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) – The Alternative Investment Management Association, (AIMA) has launched a Directive Centre on their website as part of an on-going campaign to have the European Commission’s draft directive on Alternative Investment Fund Managers revised.
It is intended as a resource for journalists and members of the public and contains everything relevant for our campaign, including press releases, guidance notes, FAQs and other resource materials issued by AIMA; speeches and articles on the directive and links to relevant documents, including the European Commission’s directive and details of its legislative process; and a quotations section featuring a host of different figures expressing their concern about the directive.
Those quoted expressing concern or reported as doing so include pension funds and pension fund industry groups, European institutional investors, global banks, international law firms, commercial real estate groups, private equity, Swedish and UK ministers, Irish officials, the chair of the European Parliament’s ECON committee, the US Treasury, the UK Conservative party, the Mayor of London, the German Funds association, the Financial Times and the Economist, and even Robert Peston, Jacques de Larosiere and Charles McCreevy.
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CNBC – Another of the once giant hedge funds is all but closing its doors. Atticus Capital founder Timothy Barakett, 44 years of age, is shuttering his flagship fund and returning $3 billion in capital to his investors. The roughly $1 billion left, Barakett’s personal fortune, will be managed by him in a so-called “family office”. Atticus will keep its European fund (not managed by Barakett), with roughly $1.5 billion under management, open.
Barakett says the decision was a personal one, driven by his desire to spend more time with his family. I don’t doubt it. But, I can’t help wondering whether Barakett’s exit is also due to the fact that most of the $3 billion he’s returning to investors is below its high water mark.
New York Times Blogs – Selling a controlling stake in Phibro won’t cut it for Citigroup, Breakingviews writes.
Sure, it would probably quell some of the uproar around the flashpoint that put Citi’s full ownership of Phibro, a commodities trading unit, under public scrutiny: the $100 million bonus due to Phibro’s boss, Andrew J. Hall, this year. But the debate has since moved on to whether such a venture belongs in Citi’s portfolio of businesses at all. That is hard for the bank to justify.
Bloomberg – John Hyland, chief investment officer for the world’s largest exchange-traded fund in natural gas, said assertions that his company helped drive up energy prices were ”self-serving statistical gibberish.”
”Any time someone tells you that common sense tells you something, that just means they don’t have the data to support it,” Hyland said in testimony today before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
