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 – Hedge fund manager John Paulson, who bet against financial companies after foreseeing the credit crisis, has been buying Citigroup Inc <C.N> shares over the past few weeks, the New York Post reported, citing sources.
Paulson bought around a 2 percent stake in Citigroup, a source told the paper. An investor with a 5 percent or higher stake in a company would have to make a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Sources told the paper Paulson believes Citigroup’s assets are undervalued. A spokesman for Paulson declined to comment to the paper on the hedge-fund manager’s investment activities.
Caribbean Net News – The UK Serious Fraud Office is investigating sales of credit-default swaps and structured-finance products, including collateralized debt obligations, prior to the credit crisis, following up an earlier investigation into a hedge fund and a related British Virgin Islands-registered company.
The SFO is looking into whether banks sold such products with flawed valuations, said Sam Jaffa, a spokesman for the government agency in London. No specific companies or credit rating agencies have been targeted under the investigation, he said.
“We’re looking generically at what might give us a cause for concern or a possible lead for finding out more,” Jaffa said in an e-mail Monday. “There’s no suggesting that across- the-board valuations were flawed. However, how valuations are arrived at, what is bundled into the funds and how they were sold are areas of interest.”
Bloomberg – The U.K. Serious Fraud Office is investigating sales of structured-finance products such as credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations prior to the global financial crisis.
The SFO is looking into whether banks that sold the products knew that valuations were flawed, SFO spokesman Sam Jaffa said today. Jaffa said no specific companies have been targeted as part of the investigation.
“It’s one of those red flag areas that we’re looking at,” Jaffa said.
The Guardian – Bayswater Asset Management, a computer-driven hedge fund shut down last year after big losses during the credit crisis, has relaunched after revamping its risk management controls, its new backers said on Wednesday. San Francisco-based Bayswater had initially been backed at its launch in 2004 with $25 million from Man Global Strategies, part of hedge fund giant Man Group.
However, its strategy of trying to exploit inefficiencies in global markets lost 12 percent in the six months to September 2007 and it returned money to investors after being caught out by a vicious circle of deleveraging in July and August that hit many computer-driven funds. The firm has now relaunched with large-scale changes to its risk management system and added a manual override, according to Revere Capital Advisors, which has seeded the fund with an initial $10 million and also plans to buy an equity stake in the firm, a spokesman said.
Reuters – Carl Icahn and other investors who failed to block Steel Partners’ plan to convert a hedge fund into a listed partnership in Delaware court, continue to fight the plan in the Cayman Islands, Steel Partners said on Thursday.
The New York-based fund manager announced it completed the controversial merger of Steel Partners II into a pink sheets portfolio company, WebFinancial. Yet a spokesman acknowledged that the deal, which will create an exchange-listed investment partnership later this year, is only partially consummated.
Reuters Amsterdam – For Dutch pension fund ABP, Michael Jackson’s death could be good for business.
The passing of the man called "King of Pop" last week has created a run on his music, which is partly owned by Dutch state pension fund ABP. It is the world’s third-largest state pension fund after Japan’s and Norway’s.
"There are always certain songs that for whatever reason, in this case tragic, suddenly become very popular. The last fact is a basis for the investment," an ABP spokesman said.
ABP bought two music catalogues last year, including the rights to some Michael Jackson songs like "You Are Not Alone," according to the website of Imagem Music Group, which manages the music assets for ABP.
Reuters – The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), which manages $169 billion in public pension funds, may boost its private-equity investments by around 40 percent as slumping markets create some acquisition bargains.
Calpers’ board next week is scheduled to vote on a plan that would increase the fund’s target for corporate buyout and venture-capital investments to 14 percent from 10 percent.
Spokesman Clark McKinley said the fund’s $22.8 billion of such investments has jumped to 13 percent as the sinking value of stocks and other assets reduced the size of the overall fund.
Alibaba News Channel – Hedge fund firm 36 South said on Monday it had launched a "high risk/high return" fund designed to protect investors’ portfolios against a surge in global inflation. The Excelsior fund will target returns of five times the rate of inflation in the G5 group of economies, if that inflation rate exceeds 5 percent, by buying long-dated out-of-the-money options across assets such as equities, commodities, currencies and interest rates, the firm said in a statement.
However, if the rate of inflation stays below 5 percent then investors could lose all their money, a spokesman said.
"Inflation is the single greatest risk facing the world economy at present," said 36 South director and founder Jerry Haworth.
"Whilst the prevailing view is that a sustained period of significant global inflation is unlikely, investors need to be attuned to this risk and the devastating effect it will have on their portfolio should this scenario come to pass."
Forbes – Plummeting stock prices in Eastern European should have made the region full of rich pickings for Western investors, but hedge funds and private equity firms have been sitting on the side lines for the last few months, fearful that things would continue to deteriorate. Now the tide is finally changing, and the some of the first investors dipping their toes back in are from the private-equity sphere.
Italian insurer Assicurazioni Generali has just put 300 million euros ($419.8 million) into a joint private-equity fund to invest in Central and Eastern Europe. It is launching the 615.0 million euro ($874.7 million) fund with PPF Group of the Czech Republic, which has already invested some 400.0 million euros ($568.9 million) into the region, focusing on mid-cap companies, a PPF spokesman said.
Nasdaq.com – Jeffrey Gendell of Tontine Partners LP, who is closing two of his hedge funds after steep losses, has raised money for his new Tontine Total Return Fund, according to regulatory filings.
The Tontine Total Return fund, which Gendell said would be launched in February, has received $11 million from investors, according to a May 21 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. A separate filing shows the overseas version of the fund has raised $1.6 million. A Tontine spokesman declined to comment.
Gendell last year began to shut down his Tontine Capital Partners LP Fund and flagship Tontine Partners Fund, after heavy losses. That was after his flagship fund had averaged annual returns of about 39% from 1997 to 2007.
Reuters – New York state’s pension fund has cut its so-called fund of funds investments to about $500 million from $5 billion since January 2008, after deciding direct investments were preferable, a spokesman said Tuesday.
Fund of funds invest money in hedge funds on behalf of their investors, and they helped the state gain access to "blue chip" funds when former Comptroller Alan Hevesi began using them in 2005, said Robert Whalen, a spokesman for the current Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
Reuters UK – NewSmith Capital Partners, one of the hedge fund firms to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating the UK banking crisis in January, has lost six staff as it cuts costs in a tough period for the industry.
According to a regulatory filing obtained by Reuters on Tuesday, Edward Johnson, an analyst on the firm’s resources and energy fund, and Ben Squire, an analyst on the credit fund, are no longer members of the firm.
The firm, which employs around 70 people, has also parted company with Sadiq Currimbhoy, a strategist on the firm’s Global Opportunities fund. A spokesman said investors had taken up an option to withdraw their assets from the liquid part of the fund and keep the remaining part of the portfolio as a private equity vehicle.
