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.
FT Alphaville – Centaurus Capital is running down its flagship hedge fund after investors with the London activist failed to back an emergency restructuring. Centaurus, founded by former BNP Paribas traders Bernard Oppetit and Randy Freeman, will now repay the bulk of investors in the $1.2bn Centaurus Alpha fund, with only a handful expected to remain.
The failure to persuade half the investors to lock up their money until June, in return for lower fees, is a surprise as others – including the flagship funds of RAB Capital and Henderson – have won investor backing for similar proposals.
International Herald Tribune – Bernard Drury is a rarity on Wall Street: a hedge fund manager who is making money, rather than losing it.
While most hedge funds are declining this year and unsettling the markets in the process, a handful are posting spectacular gains. Drury’s fund, for instance, is up 60 percent since Jan. 1.
How has he done it? Drury, a former grain trader, is not giving away his secrets. He relies on proprietary computer models to chart tides in the markets and to ride the prevailing currents.
But however smart or lucky the moneymakers have been, a few bad trades can end any hot streak. Despite Wall Street’s reputation as a place of big money and bigger egos, many of the winners are reluctant to boast, particularly given the gaping losses threatening some rivals.
International Herald Tribune – Bernard Drury is a rarity on Wall Street: a hedge fund manager who is making money rather than losing it.
While most hedge funds are sinking into red this year and unsettling the markets in the process, a handful of them are posting spectacular gains. Drury’s fund, for instance, is up 60 percent since Jan. 1.
How did he do it? Drury, a former grain trader, is not giving away his secrets. He relies on proprietary computer models to chart tides in the markets and to ride the prevailing currents.
But however smart or lucky the moneymakers have been, a few bad trades can end any hot streak. Despite Wall Street’s reputation as a place of big money and bigger egos, many of the winners are reluctant to boast, particularly given the gaping losses threatening some rivals.
"There’s going to be, naturally, a lot of forms of disillusionment with hedge funds," said Drury, who opened his fund, Drury Capital, in 1992.
Bloomberg – U.S. Representative Barney Frank is walking through Statuary Hall in the Capitol, a portrait of rumples and wrinkles. His left shirttail hangs out over his belt. Reporters and photographers are hounding him. Cameras are whirring. Questions are being shouted.
“How’s it going?” one reporter shouts.
“If you let me get in, I can find out,” Frank says, before disappearing into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office to begin negotiations with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a handful of lawmakers on a $700 billion legislative package to rescue troubled financial institutions.
Seeking Alpha – Investors pulled at least $43bn from U.S. hedge funds in September as market turmoil led to unprecedented withdrawals, an analysis by a leading research house shows.
The data from TrimTabs Investment Research – which was to be sent to clients late on Wednesday – come as hedge funds are working to prevent far bigger redemptions by the end of the year, when many funds give investors a chance to take out money.
Withdrawals can lead to a vicious circle in the markets, as funds sell holdings to return money to clients, depressing prices and prompting further redemptions.
The chief executive of a leading alternative investment manager said he expected the hedge fund industry to shrink by 50 per cent in coming months – with half the decline coming from withdrawals and half coming from investment losses.
Conrad Gunn, chief operating officer of TrimTabs, said the $43bn in September withdrawals would mark “the beginning of what we expect to be a series of outflows for the remainder of the year. We expect October outflows to be larger.”
The industry, which manages close to $2,000bn, has experienced outflows during only a handful of months previously, including a small outflow in April of this year.
Emirates Business 24/7 – Cheap they may be, but not all cash-rich Gulf investors are up for buying distressed assets in the US.
Such a move historically was a good way to make a profit. A good fund manager can buy up distressed assets for pennies on the dollar and figure out ways to sell them down the road for nickels or dimes on the dollar.
It’s a reasonable business proposition, and there are a handful of cases where investors made big profits from buying distressed assets following bursting bubbles. But with a global meltdown on the horizon, not everyone is willing to take a risk.
Dubai Group, a financial conglomerate of Dubai Holding, for one is planning to launch a fund of funds in the first half of 2009 to invest in the US and European markets. The fund, according to Tom Volpe, its group chief executive would not buy distressed assets but rather focus on traditional asset management and private equities. "Are we going to buy distressed assets? The answer is, ‘No’," he told Emirates Business.
