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.
Seeking Alpha – During the past week, almost 15 percent of investors have expressed a specific interest in India-focused funds. When compared with the first week of the second quarter, this percentage is almost double. In a recent article in Hedge Funds India (see, “Hedge Fund Managers Cautious: Focus on China and India,” June 22, 2009), Seppo Leskinen, an investment manager stated
I think the shift of the world’s economies has gone to China and India and these BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies. They are the new economy superpowers in the economic world.
A study by HedgeFund.net (HFN) seems to support this opinion. HFN found that since the first of the year, India-focused hedge funds have produced average returns of 19.6 percent. The same study also estimated that between late 2005 and September 2008, the total assets allocated to India-focused hedge funds increased from $2.8 billion to almost $14 billion. This increase of close to 500 percent shows that hedge fund investors have been looking for more exposure to India.
Zawya.com – Hedge fund liquidations fell by 50 per cent in the first quarter of 2009 from the record levels set in the previuos quarter, according to data released yesterday by Hedge Fund Research (HFR), a leading provider of the industry data.
New fund launches accelerated during the first quarter, with approximately 150 funds entering the market, the highest rate of new introductions since the 2008 second quarter.
ZURICH, June 9 (Reuters) – Hedge fund outflows of $116 billion in the first quarter of 2009 were the second highest since 1994, Lipper data show, yet hedgies may yet receive a boost from some pension funds before the end of the year. Aureliano Gentilini, Lipper’s global head of hedge fund research, said on Tuesday he expected hedge fund outflows to taper off in the second quarter and that inflows could return in the third as investor confidence returns.
"Although down 21 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008, outflows were high, but partly because withdrawal restrictions imposed in the fourth quarter were lifted in Q1 of 2009," said Gentilini.
Gentilini also said that, in spite of having their worst ever year in 2008, hedge funds were seeing renewed interest from larger institutions as the dust from the financial crisis settles. Lipper is a Thomson Reuters research firm.
English Eastday – Investors continued to withdraw capital from hedge funds in the first quarter of 2009, redeeming nearly 103 billion U.S. dollars, according to data released on Tuesday.
The redemption figure, about 7.3 percent of overall hedge fund assets, was down from the record quarterly withdrawals in the fourth quarter of 2008 of over 152 billion dollars, said Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research (HFR).
Total hedge fund industry capital declined to 1.33 trillion dollars as of the end of the first quarter of 2009, 600 billion dollars below the its peak at the end of the second quarter of 2008 and 75 billion dollars less than the total asset at the year-end 2008.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - Specialist asset management firm, Silk Invest Ltd, has acquired Danfonds Frontier Fund SPC., a Cayman based hedge fund, in an all equity deal, Silk Invest also bought majority share in Danfonds Frontier Fund SPC, which will be renamed Silk Invest Frontier Fund SPC, Danfonds Investment Management (Cayman) Limited will be renamed Silk Invest (Cayman) Limited.
The new team will launch two Luxembourg UCITS funds, African Lions and Arab Falcons, in the first quarter of 2009. The Silk Invest Frontier Fund SPC will be relaunched in the second quarter of 2009 after finalizing the new offering memorandum and the various counterparty agreements.
Zin Bekkali, CEO of Silk Invest, comments that “the deal is a uniquely structured combination of talents that complements our new African and Middle Eastern fund platform.” Following the transaction, Daniel Broby, CEO of Danfonds, will become the Chief Investment Officer of Silk Invest.
Daniel Broby says that the deal “is perfectly timed from an investor perspective. There is now immense opportunity in frontier markets as a resultof the dramatic declines caused by the credit crisis; to which these economies are partially immune.”
Dr Heinz Hockmann, the Chairman of Silk Invest, notes that “The synergies between the Silk African Lions Fund, the Silk Arab Falcons Fund and the Danfonds Frontier Fund were immediately obvious. Our aim was always to become the most credible frontier markets specialist. With this deal we can demonstrate to our investors, more than ever, that we have an unrivalled frontier markets team, managing a unique investment offering across different asset classes.”
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Bloomberg – The biggest-ever decline in commodities turned Pierre Andurand and Chris Levett into this year’s heroes for investors.
Andurand’s $1.1 billion BlueGold Capital Management LLP hedge fund in London almost tripled between its February debut and November by betting on higher oil prices in the first half of 2008 and then reversing the strategy, the 31-year-old manager said. Levett’s $3 billion London-based Clive Capital LLP returned 44 percent in the first 11 months of the year.
The first bear market in commodities since 2001, as measured by the UBS Bloomberg CMCI Index, cut investments in raw materials to $144 billion from a peak of $270 billion in the second quarter, Barclays Capital estimates. While the CMCI rose almost fivefold from 2001 to 2008, beating stocks and bonds, commodities measured by the Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index fell 53 percent since June and are heading for the worst year in five decades.
Economic Times – A former Intel Corp engineer has been charged with stealing trade secrets worth $1 billion from the chip maker while he worked for Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Federal prosecutors in Massachusetts alleged this week in a five-count indictment that Biswamohan Pani, 33, illegally downloaded more than a dozen confidential documents from Intel’s computer system in California during a four-day stretch in June. He had already resigned from Santa Clara, California-based Intel, but remained on the payroll and still had access to the company’s computers while he burned unused vacation days.
What Pani’s supervisors didn’t know then is that instead of taking the time to investigate a hedge fund job Pani claimed he was considering, he had actually started working for AMD and for a brief period was on both companies’ payrolls.
