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 – Blackstone Group LP, the world’s biggest buyout company, canceled a plan to start a hedge fund that initially aimed to invest as much as $1 billion in Asian companies affected by events such as mergers and reorganizations.
Blackstone decided not to proceed with the Asian event- driven fund “after a review of the market environment and our strategic priorities globally,” New York-based Blackstone spokesman Peter Rose said in an e-mail. The fund was to be managed by Blackstone A.M.N. Advisors.
Most of about 17 A.M.N. team members, including Chief Investment Officer Aaron Nieman, left after the March decision, said four people familiar with the matter, declining to be identified because the information isn’t public. The rest have been transferred to other Blackstone departments, they said. Rose declined to comment on specific personnel.
Reuters – Integrated Asset Management said on Wednesday it is repositioning as a pure play brokerage business after agreeing to sell a 51 percent stake in its French fund of hedge funds business.
The firm, listed on London’s AIM market, is selling the stake in Altigefi to Sal. Oppenheim in a deal which will also see the private banking group exit as Integrated’s major shareholder.
The move is evidence of smaller asset management players being forced to reexamine their business models as the financial crisis changes the market place. A spokesman said Integrated’s decision to concentrate on brokerage came because it had become more and more difficult to achieve the scale thought necessary to successfully run a fund of funds business.
Reuters – Integrated Asset Management said on Wednesday it is repositioning as a pure play brokerage business after agreeing to sell a 51 percent stake in its French fund of hedge funds business.
The firm, listed on London’s AIM market, is selling the stake in Altigefi to Sal. Oppenheim in a deal which will also see the private banking group exit as Integrated’s major shareholder.
The move is evidence of smaller asset management players being forced to reexamine their business models as the financial crisis changes the market place. A spokesman said Integrated’s decision to concentrate on brokerage came because it had become more and more difficult to achieve the scale thought necessary to successfully run a fund of funds business.
Street.Com – In a fact sheet about the fund, which engages in several arbitrage strategies, AQR outlined plans to take advantage of a lack of liquidity in the "thinly traded" SPAC market.
A spokesman for AQR says the firm is not concerned that it missed the height of the market last fall, since it expects attractive risk-adjusted returns for some trades.
EasyBourse.com – The U.S. and Germany are going "in the same direction" ahead of next week’s G20 summit, a spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said Friday amid reports of rifts between Europe and the U.S.
There are "no points of contention here between us and the U.S. government. For both of us, and our position has been made clear for some time, regulation of financial markets is the focus of the meeting," the spokesman said after Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama held a video conference Thursday.
"The proposals that (U.S. Treasury Secretary) Timothy Geithner has put on the table when it comes to regulation of certain players – hedge funds and others – show that we are proceeding together in the same direction," spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told a regular press briefing.
In Obama’s first trip to Europe since being elected, the Group of 20 summit on April 2 – which brings together major industrialized and developing nations – takes place against the backdrop of the worst financial crisis in decades.
New York Times Blogs – Swiss private bank Union Bancaire Privée, one of the largest European hedge-fund investors, offered Thursday to buy back $700 million of its clients’ Bernard L. Madoff-related investments at half what they originally paid.
The bank, based in Geneva, will offer to pay clients the equivalent of 50 percent of the cost of their investment in five equal annual payments, plus 2 percent interest, Jérôme Koechlin, a UBP spokesman, told Bloomberg News. The first payment would be made on Dec. 31, he added.
‘‘The bank has decided to make a goodwill gesture,’’ the company said in an e-mailed statement. This is ‘‘designed to reinforce its partnership with its clients by offering a comprehensive financial package.’’
Reuters – Goldman Sachs Group Inc said several partners must cover margin calls triggered by the depressed value of Goldman stock and many of the firm’s hedge funds, but the bank denied it is lending money to its executives.
"Partners can, and many do, have margin accounts at the firm," Goldman spokesman Lucas van Praag told Reuters on Wednesday. "To the extent that a margin call is triggered, they, just like anyone else, will receive a margin call. If the call isn’t met, the firm will sell stock to cover the shortfall."
Reuters – NewSmith Capital Partners, one of the hedge fund firms to appear before last month’s Treasury Select Committee into the banking crisis, told Reuters on Thursday partner Jeremy Silewicz had left the firm.
Silewicz, who joined NewSmith in March 2007 as a portfolio manager on its European fund before moving to a role in marketing, left at the end of last year, a spokesman said.
He added that Andrew Irving, a member of NewSmith’s operations team, had also left the firm, but declined to comment on the reasons for their departures.
Reuters – A hedge fund manager, a brokerage trader and a financial adviser were charged on Thursday with insider trading in the stock of supermarket chain Albertsons Inc, reaping total profits of about $7.5 million, according to court documents.
The criminal complaints were filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against Joseph Contorinis, a former employee at Jefferies Asset Management LLC, as well as trader Michael Koulouroudis and financial adviser Nicos Achillea Stephanou, whose employers were not immediately known.
Jefferies was not mentioned in the complaint against Contorinis. Firm spokesman Tom Tarrant said Contorinis left a year ago. He declined to comment on the charge or arrest of Contorinis by the FBI on Thursday.
Money Management Letter – The Utah Retirement Systems has proposed that hedge funds’ management fees cover operating expenses only, that performance fees be paid either at the end of a lockup period or placed on a deferred schedule, and that managers should meet the transparency needs of every investor.
The scheme has issued what it calls a summary of preferred hedge fund terms, a copy of which was obtained by MML’s sister publication Alternative Investment News. Spokesman Dave Anderson declined to answer any questions, saying that the document was confidential and only meant for Utah’s hedge funds.
Bloomberg - Deutsche Bank AG, Germany’s biggest bank, said it suffered no losses from its U.S. hedge funds CQ Capital and Distressed Opportunities.
The Frankfurt-based company invested no capital in the hedge funds, which are for institutional asset management clients, spokesman Tim Oliver Ambrosius said in a telephone interview today.
Reuters – Multibillion dollar hedge fund firm Magnetar Capital has shut its London risk arbitrage desk and cut seven jobs, the firm told Reuters on Monday, as the industry goes through its biggest crisis.
A spokesman said four traders and three support staff had left the 15-person London office of Magnetar, which runs multi-strategy hedge funds.
"There’s been an appropriate reduction in the office to reflect the decision of the firm not currently to do risk arbitrage out of its London office," the spokesman said.
