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.
Forbes – Major Wall Street firms placed large bets against Morgan Stanley using credit-default swaps, two days after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc sought bankruptcy protection, the Wall Street Journal said, citing trading records.
The firms included Merrill Lynch & Co, Citigroup Inc, Deutsche Bank AG and UBS AG, according to the paper.
The paper said that a close examination of the trading revealed that the swaps played a critical role in magnifying bearish sentiment about Morgan Stanley.
Times of India – Can the wealthy trust their wealth managers any more after losing 30 to 60% of their wealth during the current global financial crisis?
The world’s top banks including brands like Morgan Stanley, UBS, Barclays and Standard Chartered operating in Asia are desperately struggling to find a suitable answer to this question.
It is interesting to see the usually suave and self-confident community of private bankers looking dazed and fearful of survival. There is already a run on deposits with some of Asia’s wealthy pulling out money from accounts of private banks. The future looks dismal. Some of the world’s top banks have either gone bust or merged with others to stave off closure.
"Professional advisers have failed to prove their worth," Peter Flavel, senior managing director of The Standard Chartered Private Bank told a conference of wealth managers in Singapore on Friday. "The players have changed in a way that was unimaginable a few months back. They will continue to change," he said.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – A former UBS AG executive has been sentenced to 6-1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to selling private information about the bank’s stock recommendations. Mitchel Guttenberg, a former manager in UBS’ equity research department, was accused by the prosecution of running the most pervasive insider trading rings since the 1980’s.
“From the moment he joined the investment review committee he planned to give that information to others to use illegally,” Judge Deborah Batts of U.S. District Court in Manhattan said yesterday.
Guttenberg didn’t try to deny the allegations and instead plead guilty to two counts of conspiracy and four counts of securities fraud. He admitted that on numerous occasions he tipped off two traders about analyst stock recommendations along with dispersing information about UBS analysts’ upgrades and downgrades that were used to net more than $17.5 million over hundreds of transactions.
Guttenberg was one of a dozen people charged with orchestrating the insider trading ring. Other employees came from such companies as Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Bear Stearns. His sentence includes three years of supervision following his incarceration at a minimum security prison in New Jersey.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
Reuters – Goldman Sachs could post its first ever quarterly loss as a public company in December, as market turmoil weighs on revenue for investment banking businesses and forces asset writedowns.
One Wall Street analyst, Glenn Schorr at UBS, predicted a loss for the bank on Friday. The potential for a quarterly loss, combined with the generally weaker environment for financial institutions, has some investors wondering if Goldman Sachs really deserves to trade at a higher valuation than Morgan Stanley, the other major independent investment bank that is now a commercial bank.
Goldman’s shares trade at about 1.1 times their tangible book value, while Morgan Stanley’s shares trade at less than half their tangible book value. A spokesman for Goldman declined to comment.
Goldman Sachs is legendary for its risk management expertise. In early 2007, it saw the storm clouds gathering above the subprime mortgage market and positioned itself to profit from the expected home loan downturn.
guardian.co.uk – Morgan Stanley survived the recent panic in financial markets, but its prime brokerage business may never fully recover.
More than a third of Morgan’s prime brokerage assets went out the door during the past month — some rivals said attrition could be as large as one-half — as investors unnerved by the credit crunch lost confidence in the bank.
Across Wall Street, hundreds of investment funds that relied on broker-dealers established accounts with commercial banks boasting stronger credit. The moves have shaken up a business long dominated by Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Bear Stearns.
"It’s a $2 trillion business and in normal market conditions, people kill themselves to move 1 percent of market share. In recent weeks, probably 35 to 40 percent of global market share has been redistributed," said Alex Ehrlich, global head of prime services at UBS. "Never has there been a more disruptive period."
The Australian – David Gray, UBS’s head of prime services in the Asia-Pacific, says: "In the next three months, people will make decisions about whether they want to continue their business that may prove uneconomic for them," Hong Kong-based Mr Gray said. "Fund managers are quite a hardy lot who don’t give up easily; they’ve gone through a couple of crises."
About 20 per cent of hedge funds in Asia, which underperformed rivals in the US and Europe, are profitable this year, according to Mr Gray. Their performance diverged from declines of 40 per cent to gains of 20 per cent, he said.
Bloomberg – Commodities markets are heading for the biggest annual decline since 2001 as investors exit leveraged bets and slowing economic growth erodes demand for raw materials.
The value of the 19 commodities in the Reuters-Jefferies CRB Index fell $280.6 billion, or 43 percent, from its July 3 peak, a loss larger than their total worth two years ago, data compiled by Bloomberg show. UBS AG, the Zurich-based bank that bought Enron Corp.’s energy unit in 2002, plans to exit most commodity trading. About 15 percent of investors in Boone Pickens’s BP Capital LLC hedge fund may want their money back.
The same credit-market seizure that led to last month’s bankruptcy of New York-based Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and the forced sale of Merrill Lynch & Co. is squeezing speculators who drove commodities to record highs. Slower expansion in the U.S., China and India is also undermining prices of crude oil, which fell 36 percent, and corn, down 43 percent.
Wealth Bulletin – Geneva-based Union Bancaire Privée emerged as the largest fund of hedge funds provider, replacing UBS Global Asset Management at the top, with $56.8bn, according to the InvestHedge Billion Dollar Club.
Funds of hedge funds showed the first signs of an asset slowdown in the first half of this year, but still managed a net inflow of nearly $50bn despite turbulent markets and lacklustre returns, according to a FINalternatives report.
As per the latest survey of the InvestHedge Billion Dollar Club, funds of funds recorded an average negative return of 1.25% for the first six months of the year, and grew their overall assets by only about 4.5%, compared to 17% during the corresponding period last year.
BusinessWeek – Platinum and palladium prices rose Thursday alongside gold prices, though the gains were dampened somewhat by falling oil prices and a stronger dollar.
Precious metals are often bought to hedge against a weakening dollar.
Platinum futures for October delivery rose $43.50 to settle at $1,484.20 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Palladium futures for December delivery rose $6.50 to settle at $296.10 an ounce.
A note from a UBS analyst encouraging investors to buy gold boosted precious metals.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – The SRM Global Master Fund, headed by former UBS AG star trader Jonathan Wood, is down about 85% over the course of its two-year tenure, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
Launched in September 2006, the fund grew fast, raising over $3 billion in assets in what was one of the largest European hedge fund kick-offs ever. The fund held long equity positions in companies that were involved in takeovers, mergers or restructurings.
Mr. Wood’s stellar UBS reputation earned him the trust of many affluent investors. However, venturing into a hedge fund is very different territory. Investors agreed to higher than normal lock up periods, some as long as five years, apparently not too concerned about potential risks. Now many are barred from cashing out or even cutting their losses.
The SRM fund has had a string investments gone sour. They held a major stake in Northern Rock, which was nationalized by the British Government last year, causing shares to plummet. Wood is currently seeking a judicial review.
Adding to the unlucky investments is the stake that SRM held in Countrywide. The mortgage lender was taken over by Bank of America for a deal that Wood thought undervalued them greatly. Bank of America ended up with a steal, purchasing Countrywide for $2.5 billion.
One notable investor in SRM is UBS, who in addition to providing their prime brokerage services, allocated about $500 million to the fund.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds! Be sure to check out our sister sites. For more information, visit www.hedgeconetworks.com
The Money Times – Last year, I read an article in which David Herro outlined his rationale for owning shares of UBS in his Oakmark International fund. He focused on the value of its wealth management unit, which delivers stable earnings and benefits from the spread of wealth across the globe. Fair enough, but UBS’ most recent quarterly results show the bank’s abysmal performance in other areas is now tarnishing its crown jewel.
After a fourth straight quarterly loss due to subprime writedowns, UBS’ Wealth Management unit suffered net outflows of 19.3 billion Swiss francs ($18.8 billion) — its first net outflows since the fourth quarter of 2000.
In response, the bank is reversing its "one bank" strategy by giving increased autonomy to its three businesses: Investment Banking, Wealth Management, and Asset Management. The initiative could pave the way to a spinoff or sale of the investment banking business.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Writedowns from major banks have reached the $500 billion mark, only one year after the subprime fallout forced mortgage-backed securities to plummet in value. And it’s not over. Some economists estimate that number will ascend upwards to $2 trillion by the time all the damage is done.
UBS, the European bank hit hardest by the U.S. fueled mortgage crisis, announced its second quarter losses yesterday to be $6 billion, most of which can be attributed to subprime-backed assets.
This marks the fourth consecutive quarterly loss that the Zurich-based bank has posted. UBS has previously written down over $35 billion since the credit crisis started last summer.
Other major banks are dealing with the same dilemmas. Wachovia has already experienced over $22 billion worth of write downs, while Merrill Lynch and Citigroup each have written down over $50 billion.
The current probe launched by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo isn’t helping either. Since major banks are now being forced to buy back bad auction-rate securities, many financial institutions are finding themselves in way over their head. In addition to the subprime-related mess, UBS has to allocate $20 billion to buy back the shoddy securities from disdained clients.
In an attempt to restructure, UBS also announced it will separate some key divisions of the company. The investment bank, which has been experiencing the major losses, will pull away from the bank’s wealth management and asset management divisions.
UBS hopes to give each section “maximum strategic flexibility.” While some speculate UBS is positioning themselves to be sold, chairman Peter Kurer has insisted that the companies are not for sale.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
HedgeCo.Net is a premier hedge fund database and community for qualified and accredited investors only. Membership on www.hedgeco.net is FREE and EASY. We also offer FREE LISTINGS for Hedge Funds! Be sure to check out our sister sites. For more information, visit www.hedgeconetworks.com
