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Bloomberg – Man Group Plc, the largest publicly traded hedge-fund manager, rose as much as 4.5 percent in London trading after redemptions by institutional investors slowed.
Pension plans, endowments and money managers pulled $1.8 billion on July 1, half the $3.6 billion of redemptions three months earlier, London-based Man Group said in a statement today. The stock was up 1.7 percent at 243.25 pence as of 9:05 a.m.
Forbes – Man Group PLC, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund, said Thursday that funds under management declined in the first half despite a recent growth in private investor sales.
The group said it had $43.3 billion in funds under management on June 30, down from $44 billion at the end of May and $46.8 billion on March 31.
Private investor sales in the three months ending June 30, the company’s first quarter, were $3.4 billion, producing a net inflow of $1.9 billion. However, institutional sales amounted to just $300 million, with a net outflow of $3.3 billion.
Stuff – Hedge funds are living up to their high-flying reputation again with strong returns in the last three months, but many investors burned by last year’s losses are clamoring for reforms before committing new money.
Final June quarter data will not be released until next week, but Merrill Lynch analysts who track returns in the $1.3 trillion industry wrote on Monday that hedge funds will likely post their best quarterly performance since early 2000.
Reuters India – Hedge funds are living up to their high-flying reputation again with strong returns in the last three months, but many investors burned by last year’s losses are clamoring for reforms before committing new money.
Final June quarter data will not be released until next week, but Merrill Lynch analysts who track returns in the $1.3 trillion industry wrote on Monday that hedge funds will likely post their best quarterly performance since early 2000.
guardian.co.uk – Sterling fell against the dollar to near a two-week low on Monday after a collapse of support for the UK’s ruling Labour Party in the European election raised the chances of further challenges to Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Despite its losses against the dollar, the pound rose against the euro, as the single European currency came under broad selling pressure after Standard & Poor’s cut its sovereign rating on Ireland for the second time in three months.
Analysts said Labour’s drubbing in weekend European elections added to the uncertainty surrounding the political future of Britain’s embattled prime minister, who reshuffled his Cabinet on Friday after six of the party’s ministers quit.
Caribbean Net News – Cayman Islands hedge fund Harley International Ltd withdrew $425 million from swindler Bernard Madoff in the three months before his arrest, according to a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion from the fund.
The lawsuit on Tuesday by trustee Irving Picard, who is spearheading a global search to return money to thousands of defrauded customers, is one of several against funds that fed Wall Street’s biggest investment scheme over 20 years.
NineMSN – The trustee overseeing the liquidation of disgraced financier Bernard Madoff’s assets sued another investment fund on Tuesday, claiming it owes Madoff’s victims more than $US1 billion ($A1.32 billion) it withdrew from his firm.
The complaint in Manhattan bankruptcy court alleges Harley International Ltd knew or should have known that the fortune came out of the pockets of victims of Madoff’s giant Ponzi scheme.
Of the $US1 billion ($A1.32 billion) total, the private, overseas hedge fund withdrew $US425 million ($A560.61 million) during the three months before his arrest last year.
CNBC – Man Group , the world’s largest listed hedge fund firm, said funds under management are $47.7 billion, down 11 percent from end-December, as clients pulled out assets in the face of falling markets.
The firm said net client outflows for the three months to March are estimated at $3.2 billion, with both private investors and institutions pulling out assets.
Times Online – Shares in the London Stock Exchange dropped nearly 10 per cent or 50½p to a four-year low of 463½p amid fears that its trading update tomorrow will show another dramatic slump in the value of equities traded as struggling hedge funds withdraw cash.
Dame Clara Furse, the outgoing chief executive, has seen a 77 per cent fall in the share price of Europe’s biggest stock market from its £19.77 peak a year ago as it has been bedevilled by falling equity volumes and mounting competition from electronic platforms such as Chi-X and Bats. Direct Edge in the US, which has a deal with London’s Plus Markets, yesterday announced that it would convert to an exchange in the last quarter of this year.
Credit Suisse cut its target price to 495p and slashed earnings forecasts, saying the value of equities traded in London had fallen by about 30 per cent in the last three months of 2008 against a year ago and it expected these falls to continue.
International Herald Tribune – Fund manager Polar Capital Holdings said on Friday that assets under management in the nine months to December fell by 22 percent to $2.45 billion (1.65 billion pounds), due to market deterioration.
The fund manager, which runs hedge funds and long-only funds, said it expects $500 million of redemptions in the three months to March.
The resignation of Julian Barnett, manager of its Paragon hedge fund, is expected to bring about a further $400 million outflows when the fund is wound up.
CNBC – Shares in Man Group, the world’s biggest listed hedge fund firm, slid on Wednesday after it said funds under management fell 21 percent and that it would sue over its exposure to the Madoff scandal.
Man said its assets totalled $53.3 billion at the end of last year, below Citi analysts’ expectations and down from $67.6 billion at the end of September. Part of the drop was due to net redemptions, which reached $3.2 billion in the three months to December.
Man Group’s shares were down 5 percent at 214 pence at 1014 GMT, up from a trough of 200 pence earlier. The blue chip FTSE 100 Index was 1.6 percent lower
Business Times Malaysia – Hedge funds posted their biggest decline on record last year, losing US$350 billion globally, as the credit crisis crippled returns and forced investors to pull money out, an industry report showed.
About 90 per cent of the money was lost in the three months to the end of November, according to a preliminary report published on Monday by Singapore-based data provider Eurekahedge.
Funds that invested in North America declined the most, posting a drop of US$183 billion for the year, the report said.
The hedge-fund industry shrank by about a fifth to US$1.5 trillion at the end of the year from a peak of US$1.9 trillion, Eurekahedge said.
