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.”

Alex Akesson

Tags: accredited-investors, african lions, asset-classes, asset-management-firm, broby, chief-investment-officer, credit-crisis, dramatic declines, falcons, frontier markets, hedgeco, immense opportunity, investment-management, offering memorandum, palm-beach, second-quarter, synergies

West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – The Group of Thirty released a new report, ‘The Structure of Financial Supervision: Approaches and Challenges in a Global Marketplace’.

The report was issued after the meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington DC. The Group of Thirty is an international body composed of central bank governors, leading economists, and private financial sector experts,

"The financial turmoil that has unfolded over the last year has tested the ability of regulatory authorities to respond effectively to financial crises. It is evident that a number of countries need to revise and reform financial regulatory structures," said Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Group of Thirty’s Board of Trustees.

Volcker underscored that improvement in regulatory approaches is essential at the national and cross-border levels. The G30 report compares and analyses the financial regulatory approaches of 17 jurisdictions, including the UK, the US and Australia, in order to illustrate the implications of the four principal models of supervisory oversight: (1) the Institutional Approach, (2) the Functional Approach, (3) the Integrated Approach, and (4) the Twin Peaks Approach.

The US structure, which falls outside of these four approaches, combines institutional and functional approaches with the added complexity of a number of state level agencies and actors.

Roger W Ferguson, President and CEO of TIAA-CREF, former Vice Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Board and the Vice Chairman of the G30 Working Group, said, "As we start to re-examine regulatory structures, the G30 report can play a role by building the fact base that regulators, politicians, and financial market participants will consider."

In March, the US Treasury released its ‘Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure’, which proposes a major restructuring of financial supervision toward a regulation by objectives approach, in some ways similar to the twin peaks model to supervision and regulation. The UK has already introduced modifications in its highly integrated approach.

In preparing the report, the G30 conducted interviews with key officials in the relevant jurisdictions, as well as practitioners, regulated parties, and those who may have been involved historically in the development of the current regulatory arrangements.

Alex Akesson

Editor for HedgeCo.Net
Email: alex@hedgeco.net

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Tags: advisory-services, boston, department-of-the-treasury, due-diligence-service, synergies, tony-fratto

Asian Investor – The Shaka Japan fund has been launched in New York by hedge fund manager Shaka Capital Management. It is a new start-up, launched in January of this year with partners’ capital, and has an estimated capacity of $1 billion.

Arif Imam is Shaka’s business manager and is a former managing director at Morgan Stanley, responsible for global distribution of Japanese equities.

The portfolio manager is Alexandre de Bethmann who formerly worked at Federated Global and TIAA-CREF.

Shaka’s trader is Douglas Butcher, who was also a managing director at Morgan Stanley where he handled client trading for Japanese equities.

Target return is 12-15% per year on a Sharpe Ratio of 1.2 to 1.5. It is a Japan-only long/short equity fund concentrating on the top 250 stocks in that market. The focus on large-cap stocks is in part because of the very liquid state of the short borrow that lends to running a truly efficient hedged fund.

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Tags: 10-million, arthur-sulzberger, banque-syz, bethmann, bridget, business-manager, cap-stocks, caxton, global-distribution, gross-exposure, imam, industry-group, japanese-equities, john-mcallister, liquid-state, money-managers, shaka, synergies, tiaa-cref