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Reuters – The chief executive of Dell Inc said on Tuesday that talk of IBM possibly buying Sun Microsystems was providing an "enormous opportunity" to the world’s No. 2 PC maker in the corporate server market.
Michael Dell said such talk created uncertainty over the future of Sun’s Solaris-based servers and accelerated a customer migration to the servers based on standard industry components, known as x86 servers, which are Dell’s mainstay product.
Apart from the potential IBM-Sun union, Dell is also facing an uphill battle with network equipment maker Cisco Systems with and Hewlett-Packard. Cisco has announced a foray into the server market and HP has started to offer a more complete package of technology services to its corporate clients after its purchase of EDS.
Reuters – Anxiety is sweeping the hedge fund industry before a crucial deadline on Saturday, when investors angered by recent heavy losses are expected to demand the return of billions of dollars.
"Managers have a pretty good feeling for what is coming, and there are significant redemption requests out there," said Stewart Massey, founding partner of Massey, Quick & Co., an investment consultant that puts money into hedge funds.
Saturday is the last day for thousands of investors to notify hundreds of hedge funds if they want their money back by year’s end.
Hedge funds that require three months notice from investors who wanted to exit by year’s end had a similar deadline on September 30 — also known in the industry as "D-Day."
Wall Street Journal – With anxiety about hedge-fund woes gripping the market, funds have their own fear: their investors.
Some investors, particularly what are known as "funds of funds," are demanding their money back and may ramp up requests in the weeks ahead. That has prompted hedge-fund managers to sell securities to raise cash.
"As the hedge fund investor base broadens, hedge fund portfolio management…slips out of the hands of the portfolio managers and into the hands of the investors," wrote Andrew Redleaf, who runs Whitebox Advisors, a Minneapolis hedge fund with about $5 billion under management, in an August client letter. "It is no insult to the investors to say that this worsens performance."
Funds-of-funds select hedge funds on behalf of pension funds, wealthy individuals or other investors, and charge a layer of fees on top of the hefty fees levied by hedge funds themselves. They often ask hedge funds for the option to redeem money as often as monthly and get good terms because they can bring in big chunks of cash at once.
