Reuters UK – London-based hedge fund firm NewSmith paid its senior staff 29.4 million pounds last year despite some of its investments running into trouble during a volatile year for markets.

NewSmith, one of the hedge fund firms to appear before a parliamentary committee investigating the UK banking crisis in January, wrote down the value of its listed and private equity investments, particularly in Asia, by 7 million pounds, recently released accounts for the year to the end of November 2008 showed.

This included a 3.3 million pound writedown on its holding in FibreChem Technologies, whose shares were suspended from trading over alleged accounting irregularities.

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Tags: banking crisis, hedge fund, private equity investments, uk london

Reuters UK – London-based Coller Capital, which specialises in buying private equity from investors making early exits, said on Monday it expects to launch a new fund this year to tap growing interest in the "secondary" market for private equity.

The firm’s $4.8 billion (3.3 billion pounds) Coller International Partners V fund, which closed in April 2007, is currently more than 50 percent invested, Alex Sao-Wei Lee, the firm’s Singapore-based principal, said at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit.

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Tags: coller capital, international partners, investors, reuters, singapore, summit, uk london, wei lee

10 News – Investors will be listening closely to details of the $1 trillion toxic asset-purchase program to be announced Monday as the Obama administration seeks to provide enough information to satisfy markets and avoid the kind of stock meltdown seen last month.

Then, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner disappointed by giving only broad outlines of the government’s approach to kick-start lending and the overall economy. With the sharp market plunge that followed Geithner’s speech on Feb. 10 still a fresh memory, administration officials Sunday sought to temper expectations for Monday’s announcement. "Ridding bank balance sheets of problem assets is the next step in that process of fixing the financial system, but it alone won’t solve the credit problem," Treasury Department spokesman Andrew Williams says.

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Tags: administration officials, balance sheets, bank balance, economy, international partners, investors, John Rutledge, market plunge, memory, private equity investment firm, problem assets, stock meltdown, temper, treasury-department, treasury-secretary, trillion, uk london

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