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.
Reuters – It appears nothing — not losses, redemption gates or lofty fees — can deter the rich from stashing their cash in hedge funds.
A year after crumbling markets triggered losses and fund managers drew fire for blocking redemptions, wealthy investors have not abandoned hedge funds, according to private bankers and wealth managers attending the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit this week.
“We see continued dedication to hedge funds,” said Catherine Keating, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase & Co’s U.S. private bank, which advises families whose combined assets total $350 billion.
Reuters – Wealthy clients believe the worst of the crisis is probably over and have started to come back to higher-risk assets such as hedge funds, a top banker at JP Morgan Private Bank said on Wednesday.
Felipe Godard, Head of European International Markets at JP Morgan Private Bank, also told the Reuters Global Wealth Management Summit in Geneva he was on the lookout for buys in his region and expected double-digit revenue growth in the coming years.
“We have seen a return of risk appetite. Clients are comfortable with the risks of hedge funds if those risks are explained,” said Godard, whose bank is the world’s second-largest hedge fund manager by assets.
Reuters – Wealth management firms are counting on new business from the moderately rich as they play down the impact of a possible exodus of the ultra wealthy from tax-hungry Britain.
The likes of steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal and Russian owner of Chelsea football club Roman Abramovich are coveted by firms, but the vast bulk of assets actually come from comfortably-off clients — the so-called mass-affluent — less able to relocate.
Courthouse News Service – Hedge fund operates took more than $2.5 million in kickbacks while putting clients into grossly overstated Wealth Management LLC accounts, the SEC claims in Federal Court. It sued the hedge fund, its managers James Putman and Simone Fevola, and several relief defendants.
Wealth Management claims to have 447 clients for whom it manages $131 million, $102 million of it in Wealth Management funds, the SEC says.
Bloomberg – Switzerland is the world’s most attractive financial center for the “mobile wealthy,” beating London, Singapore and New York, according to a new survey by Scorpio Partnership.
The Alpine nation ranks highest for economic and political stability, legal issues, children’s education and infrastructure, the London-based wealth management adviser said. Switzerland placed fifth for tax and immigration, behind Monaco, Singapore, Cayman and Hong Kong.
“To the mobile wealthy, Switzerland is very nearly all things to all people,” said Scorpio Director Stephen Wall. It “has been and will continue to be the biggest beneficiary of moves away from London.”
Bloomberg – Liongate Capital Management LLP, a London-based firm managing $2.2 billion, plans to raise $500 million for a fund of commodity hedge funds.
The Liongate Commodities Fund returned about 0.1 percent last year and 0.3 percent in January, when it operated with the firm’s capital of $40 million, the company said in a statement and a presentation. The Reuters/Jefferies CRB Index tracking 19 commodities lost 39 percent in the 13 months through Jan. 30.
“It’s an inauspicious time to invest in commodities,” said Tim Price, director of investments at London-based PFP Wealth Management, a financial adviser. “In the longer term, a shift to an inflation bias from the current deflation would represent a huge opportunity.”
Reuters Blogs – It seems that private equity fund sales are heating up so much they need their own market.
SecondMarket said today it is opening trading in limited partnership interests in private equity funds, venture capital funds, hedge funds and fund of funds (the intention to launch into this market was reported a few weeks ago by our sister publication peHUB).
The firm also hired Jeffrey Bollerman, previously at Citigroup Wealth Management, to help lead its LP interest market.
Bloomberg – Hedge-fund assets will likely drop by about $192 billion this quarter after the industry posted record losses in 2008, according to estimates by UBS AG.
Global assets will likely fall to $1.215 trillion in the first quarter, said Timothy Bell, London-based head of hedge- funds advisory at UBS’s wealth management unit. Hedge-fund investors withdrew a record $152 billion in the fourth quarter, pushing industry assets to $1.407 trillion at the end of 2008, according to Hedge Fund Research Inc.
“That trend is going to keep going certainly till the end of this first quarter,” Bell told reporters in Singapore today. “Trust will be reestablished by mid-year, provided the hedge fund industry does what it’s meant to do; January was a shining example of the lack of correlation.”
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – Marcus Schrenker, the pilot turned money manager accused of faking his own death to avoid fraud charges, was transferred from a Tallahassee hospital to a Pensacola jail on Monday.
Schrenker, 38, purposely crashed his single-engine Piper in Florida last week, hoping authorities would confirm his death upon finding the wreckage. Meanwhile, he parachuted over Alabama before the plane started to go down. He was later found at a camp site after reportedly trying to commit suicide.
Schrenker was charged with fraud in Indiana where he allegedly bilked trusting investors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through his company, Heritage Wealth Management. He also faces federal charges of purposely crashing his plane and placing a false distress call.
Authorities were tipped off when they realized that his distress call did not match up with the scenario. Schrenker had radioed that his plane had suffered a cracked windshield before imploding and causing him severe injury. However, when two rescue helicopters were dispatched along with two fighter jets, they saw that the windshield was not only intact, but the door was open with the pilot clearly missing.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
Reuters – Millionaires who long put money with hedge funds are now skittish about adding fresh cash after these loosely regulated portfolios posted record losses last year, a top industry executive said on Thursday.
"We have probably seen the worst of the (hedge fund industry redemptions), but I think it will be a slow go to build up that asset base again," Don Heberle, executive director at Bank of New York Mellon Corp’s Wealth Management unit where he oversees the Family Office and Charitable Gift Services groups, said in an interview.
The potential of hedge funds to deliver strong returns in all markets because they can sell stocks short and use borrowed money has appealed to wealthy investors for years. With the help of people like Heberle’s clients — families that are worth more than $100 million — hedge fund industry assets doubled to $2 trillion between 2005 and 2008.
New York (HedgeCo.Net) – U.S. authorities have officially declared Raoul Weil, formerly of UBS, a fugitive.
The one-time prominent business man and former chairman of UBS’s global wealth management unit, failed to surrender to police after being charged with aiding wealthy individuals in hiding their assets from the Internal Revenue Service.
According to the original complaint, Weil, who was based in Switzerland, headed a team of bankers that aimed to help 17,000 Americans hide about $20 billion via Swiss bank accounts, in hopes of avoiding U.S. taxes.
At that time, Weil worked in UBS’s cross-border private banking business. He stepped down from the bank when the charges were made public.
The order came yesterday in a Ft. Lauderdale courtroom, where Judge James Cohn officially removed Weil, 49, from the court’s pending case list and placed him on the clerk’s fugitive list.
If convicted, Weil faces up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
Julie Scuderi Senior Editor for HedgeCo.Net Email: julie@hedgeco.net
Minneapolis Star Tribune – Like most market watchers, last year’s participants in the Star Tribune Investor Roundtable failed to predict that 2008 would be a year of stomach-churning stock market declines, failed financial institutions, multibillion-dollar bailouts and credit markets as frozen as a Minnesota lake in January.
"I think everybody in the room knew there was more leverage, more speculation, more betting on the economy, but it amazes me that it got to this level," said Phil Dow, director of equity strategy at RBC Wealth Management.
But what the group of Twin Cities investment professionals did foresee a year ago was a period of unprecedented stock market volatility. The VIX index, a gauge of market swings, reached a record high this fall.
