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 – Asian hedge funds will attract a “wave” of new money that could more than double the industry’s assets from its peak of $250 billion as the region leads the world’s emergence from the deepest recession since World War II, according to GFIA Pte.
The industry in Asia will grow to two-to-three times its peak within the next five years as investors outside the region with little or no investments in Asian alternative strategies allocate to the funds, said Peter Douglas, principal of GFIA, a Singapore-based hedge-fund consulting firm. The industry has shrunk by about 30 percent from the peak reached in the first half of 2008 following client withdrawals, he said.
Bloomberg – Vicis Capital LLC, the $2.9 billion hedge fund started by former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. trader John Succo in 2004, barred clients from withdrawing money from its main fund after losses this year.
The firm received “higher-than-anticipated” requests for a Sept. 30 distribution from its Vicis Capital Fund, according to a letter sent to clients today and obtained by Bloomberg News. The New York-based hedge fund will resume withdrawals if clients approve a plan to separate hard-to-sell assets into another pool, the letter said.
Khaleej Times – Hedge fund assets may be on the rebound after a year of massive redemptions, Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Financial Officer David Viniar told analysts on Tuesday, although the prime brokerage business will remain under pressure.
“Assuming (hedge fund) performance stays OK — which it has been through the first half of this year — it feels like we are pretty much through the redemption cycle, and it actually looks like you are going to start to see some money flowing into hedge funds,” he said during a conference call.
The hedge fund business suffered record withdrawals at the end of 2008 as markets imploded, sending the industry’s assets under management down by about 40 percent.
Reuters – Private equity firm Cerberus is to place investors seeking withdrawals from one of its hedge funds into a special purpose vehicle which would make cash distributions over time, a source familiar with the contents of a recent investor letter said on Thursday.
For investors remaining in the fund, fees will be reduced, the source said.
MENAFN - U.K. hedge fund manager Man Group reported a further decline in its assets under management Thursday, but said institutional customers have significantly slowed their withdrawals and private investor sales have been strong.
The group said funds under management at the end of its fiscal first quarter were $43.3 billion, down 7.5% from $46.8 billion at the end of March.
Bloomberg – Hedge fund managers gathering in Monaco this week said they have work to do to regain investors’ confidence after the industry’s record losses last year.
“We have to prove as an industry that we can provide absolute returns again,” Pierre Lagrange, co-founder of hedge fund GLG Partners Inc., told some of the 750 delegates at the GAIM International hedge fund conference in Monte Carlo. “We have to show that in the next year or two we can strike back.”
Hedge funds tumbled 19 percent in 2008, the worst year since Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc. began keeping records almost two decades ago, prompting investors to pull money, and funds to shut or impose limits on withdrawals. Funds have started to rebound this year, rising 9.4 percent through May, according to the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Alpha Magazine unveiled the 2009 Europe Hedge Fund top 50, showing that that Europe was not immune to investor angst over hedge funds. A wave of investor withdrawals shapes the magazine’s annual ranking of the 50 biggest European single-manager hedge fund firms, as total assets fell to $285 billion as of January 1, 2009, from $405 billion a year earlier, a 30% drop.
Europe’s hedge fund business may be looking at an encouraging longer-term picture, however. The region boasts five of the world’s 20 biggest hedge fund firms — led by two London-based powerhouses, Brevan Howard Asset Management and Man Investments.
Brevan Howard’s total assets surged from $21 billion at the end of 2007 to $26.8 billion when this year began, elevating the firm from third to first in Alpha’s 2009 Europe Hedge Fund 50. Man Investments had a similarly strong year; its overall assets grew from $20.9 billion to $24.4 billion, lifting the firm two rungs to second place.
The two top European hedge fund firms in last year’s ranking have been taken down a few notches. Barclays Global Investors falls from No. 1 to No. 3, and GLG Partners drops from No. 2 to No. 8; the firms saw their assets drop, respectively, 35% and 52%.
Alpha’s Europe Hedge Fund Top 5
Rank Firm Total Capital ($ millions) 1 Brevan Howard Asset Management $26,840 2 Man Investments 24,400 3 Barclays Global Investors 17,000 4 BlueBay Asset Management 16,700 5 Bluecrest Capital Management 13,273
For Alpha’s 2009 Europe Hedge Fund 50, data was gathered through questionnaires completed by hedge fund managers, supplemented by extensive Alpha staff research. We provide each manager’s total assets under management as of January 1, 2009, unless otherwise indicated. Where possible, we also show assets at the individual fund level, with 2008 net returns, for the five biggest funds run by a firm.
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Reuters India – Satellite Asset Management LP, a $2.8 billion (1.84 billion pounds) hedge fund founded by former employees of billionaire George Soros, is closing down because of client withdrawals, Bloomberg said on its website late Friday.
The New York-based firm has started returning money to investors from its three funds, Satellite Overseas Fund Ltd, Satellite Fund II LP and Satellite Credit Opportunities Ltd, the report said, citing a person familiar with the matter.
English Eastday – Investors continued to withdraw capital from hedge funds in the first quarter of 2009, redeeming nearly 103 billion U.S. dollars, according to data released on Tuesday.
The redemption figure, about 7.3 percent of overall hedge fund assets, was down from the record quarterly withdrawals in the fourth quarter of 2008 of over 152 billion dollars, said Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research (HFR).
Total hedge fund industry capital declined to 1.33 trillion dollars as of the end of the first quarter of 2009, 600 billion dollars below the its peak at the end of the second quarter of 2008 and 75 billion dollars less than the total asset at the year-end 2008.
Reuters UK – HSBC Global Asset Management says it is finally seeing inflows into some of its hedge funds and believes it may have reached a "tipping point" after a tough period of client withdrawals.
Bill Maldonado, head of alternative investments at the firm’s active investment arm Halbis, said in an interview that the wider hedge funds industry was likely to be seeing a similar stabilisation in flows.
"We saw a lot of redemptions in the fourth quarter of last year, we saw far fewer redemptions in the first quarter of this year, and we’re now just seeing the first net inflows into some of our strategies, and I suspect that’s fairly typical," Maldonado said on Thursday.
Bloomberg – The Children’s Investment Fund Management UK LLP, a $9.5 billion London-based hedge fund, has about $1.2 billion of short positions in Japanese stocks including Toshiba Corp., according to exchange filings.
The fund, better known as TCI, has shorted 13 Japanese stocks, data based on exchange filings compiled by Bloomberg show. Mizuho Financial Group Inc., Japan’s second-biggest bank by revenue, and Sony Corp., the world’s second-biggest consumer- electronics maker, are also among the short positions.
The bets against Japanese stocks by activist fund TCI, which lost a proxy battle with Japanese utility Electric Power Development Co. last year, come as the Nikkei 225 Stock Average completed its worst fiscal year since March 2001, losing 35 percent. TCI’s fund fell 43 percent in 2008, as global hedge funds were battered by client withdrawals and the worst market losses since the 1930s.
Reuters – Highbridge Capital Management, the hedge fund majority-owned by JPMorgan Chase & Co, received $1 billion in net inflows this year, the Financial Times reported citing people familiar with the fund.
The inflows suggest that investors are tentatively returning to hedge funds after a dismal 2008 that saw record losses and withdrawals, the paper said in a report posted on it website.
