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 – Platypus Capital Management is liquidating its long-short Asian and Australian hedge funds, citing difficulties in a “post-Madoff world.”
The Sydney-based firm, with about $42 million in assets, will return funds to investors, saying it didn’t have a “viable size in the industry as it currently exists,” partners Chris Talbot, Derek Sicklen and Charles Magri wrote in a letter to investors obtained by Bloomberg. Sicklen confirmed the contents in a telephone interview today.
Bloomberg – Hedge funds may increase assets by more than 8 percent this year as clients led by pension plans and rich families invest $50 billion of the cash they held while financial markets fell, according to a report by Barclays Plc.
Investors have about 14 percent of their assets in cash, according to the survey released today by Barclays Capital, the investment-banking unit of London-based Barclays. Almost 80 percent plan to allocate money to hedge funds in 2009.
“We are seeing that investors are now realizing that hedge funds are surviving as a compelling investment proposition and as an important segment of the broader asset-management industry,” Andrea Gentilini, the New York-based author of the report, said in a telephone interview.
Reuters – Three former executives at JPMorgan Asset Management plan to launch a Greater China hedge fund via a start-up in Hong Kong, tapping rising investor demand for Asian equities amid the global financial crisis.
"Greater China may be the first region to recover from the global economic crisis, and will certainly attract global fund flows," Lu Jun, one of the co-founders said in a telephone interview. "I think it’s good timing to launch the new fund."
Lu, previously a star fund manager at JPMorgan’s China fund venture, has teamed up with Man Wing Chung, former head of JPMorgan’s Greater China team, and Joseph Tang, who focused on Taiwan investment, to co-found JTM Capital Partners. The partners will start running a hedge fund in mid-June.
Bloomberg – An unexpected coffee rally sparked by dwindling supplies risks squeezing Starbucks Corp., Kraft Foods Inc. and hedge funds betting on a decline.
Demand may exceed output by 8 million 60-kilogram bags in the coming year — almost what Germany consumes — and exporter stockpiles are the lowest since 1965, the International Coffee Organization said. Arabica coffee futures may jump 25 percent this year after falling for the first time since 2001 as output drops in Brazil and Colombia, the Western Hemisphere’s top two growers, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Feb. 9.
“We see coffee prices increasing in 2009,” Sandra Bachofer, who helps manage $1.2 billion for Zug, Switzerland-based Tiberius Group, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “We expect coffee to be one of the most promising commodities in 2009.”
Bloomberg – The annual Hedge Funds Care benefit – - backed by Kenneth Tropin and Michael Vranos — will downsize from a black-tie dinner to a cocktail party tomorrow night in New York.
The nonprofit, which aids child-abuse prevention programs, is hoping a laidback atmosphere will encourage some donors to write bigger checks — and allow jobless hedge-fund managers to network while eating mini-hot dogs and shrimp instead of filet mignon.
“A formal, sit-down dinner wouldn’t have been the most appropriate thing to do when times are so bad,” Kathryn Conroy, the organization’s executive director, said in a telephone interview.
Bloomberg – Kanetsu Asset Management Co. will liquidate hedge funds, including Japan’s best performer last year, as commodities trading shrinks, a company executive said.
The Tokyo-based firm will shut DragonHorse, which according to data provider Eurekahedge Pte returned 27 percent in 2008, the highest among Japan-based hedge funds. Kanetsu Asset will also close two other hedge funds before the firm shuts at the end of March, because computer-driven trading of commodities has become less viable as volumes have declined, President Takashi Ogura said in a telephone interview today.
As many as 920 funds globally may have closed last year, eclipsing the previous record of 848, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. Japan’s dwindling commodities market and regulatory hurdles to combining commodities trading with financial securities hindered Kanetsu Asset, which had 800 million yen ($8.9 million) in assets.
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.
International Herald Tribune- One by one, John Devaney sold his treasures, hoping to forestall what was in the end inevitable. He sold his Renoir and his Gulfstream, his home and his helicopter. Even his cherished yacht — gone.
But on Wednesday Devaney, who made and then lost a fortune trading mortgage investments, finally called it quits. He shut his hedge fund, and told his investors that all their money was gone too.
"I’m devastated, I’m totally devastated," Devaney said by telephone from Aspen, Colorado "I feel horrible that I’ve lost my own money and that so many people who saw the skills I have and trusted in us have now been hurt."
