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 – Mohammed Syed has spent the past seven years scouting out the best hedge-fund investments for clients of his Axiom Fund Manager Ltd. Now, he’s seeking to expand the $100 million he oversees by acquiring rivals.
“I am looking for two or even three firms that can complement my business,” said Syed, 45, who founded London-based Axiom in 2002. “A year ago most people wanted huge premiums for their businesses, but now it’s a different story.”
Hedge funds are consolidating after record investment losses and customer withdrawals cut assets by 37 percent in the second half of 2008, squeezing their main source of fees. As many as 40 percent of the 9,000 hedge funds and funds of funds may disappear in the next two years, according to Karamvir Gosal, a New York- based investment banker at Jefferies Putnam Lovell. While some will return money to investors and shut their doors, mergers and acquisitions will be more prevalent than in the past.
Bloomberg - Atsuko Tsuchiya, the Japanese hedge- fund adviser who left Merrill Lynch & Co. to found her own firm, led Atom Japan Equity Fund to an 18 percent return in 2008, beating rivals who suffered the worst year on record.
Tsuchiya, 36, achieved the gains in the fund’s first full year of trading, withstanding market losses and investor withdrawals that ravaged the $1.5 trillion hedge-fund industry, Bloomberg data shows. The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index fell a record 12 percent in 2008.
One of the nation’s few female hedge-fund advisers, Tsuchiya combined so-called event-driven and equity long-short strategies in the Japan-focused, 3 billion yen ($33 million) fund. Bets on companies that launched buyouts or bought affiliates to combat Japan’s first recession in seven years helped Atom dodge a 33 percent slide in assets at Japan-focused hedge funds last year.
Bloomberg – The steepest plunge in crude prices on record may be setting up oil investors for a rally this year, if history is any guide.
The so-called forward curve of futures contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange suggests oil will rise 30 percent to $60.29 a barrel by December. The curve looks almost the same as 10 years ago, after Russia’s default and the collapse of the Long-Term Capital Management LP hedge fund raised concerns that a global economic slowdown would reduce energy demand. Crude prices fell 25 percent in the final quarter of 1998, the steepest drop in seven years.
