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Reuters – The value of Japanese retail-targeted mutual funds rose to a 10-month high of 58.8 trillion yen ($613 billion) in July, lifted by inflows into international equities funds and strength in share prices, an industry body said on Thursday.
It was the sixth straight month of increases in the value of publicly placed investment trust funds, or "toshins", as signs of a global economic recovery boost investor confidence. The value was also helped by rises in share prices, with the benchmark Nikkei share average .N225 gaining 4 percent in July.
The overall value of publicly placed investment trust funds rose by 1.7 trillion yen or 3 percent from the previous month to 58.8 trillion yen in July, the highest since September, Japan’s Investment Trusts Association said.
Bloomberg – Tokio Marine Holdings Inc., Japan’s biggest casualty insurer, plans to trim hedge-fund investments and shift more of its portfolio in the industry to strategies such as macro and long-short equity funds.
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co., a unit of Tokio Marine Holdings with 8.4 trillion yen ($90 billion) in assets, will trim its holdings in hedge funds “slightly” this year from about 100 billion yen at the end of March, said Eisuke Shigemura, who runs the firm’s hedge-fund investment group. He declined to quantify the planned reduction.
Bloomberg – Frederic Eechaute, a former senior analyst at DKR Oasis Management Co. LP, will start a Japan- focused equity hedge fund that trades stocks using its own analyst database.
Eechaute, who will split his time between Tokyo and Sydney, along with Stephen Good, who formerly worked in the Japanese equity sales department at Mizuho Securities Co., set up Instinct Capital in June to run the new fund that may open as early as September. The fund will employ a so-called long-short strategy, betting on rising and falling stocks, and have a maximum capacity of 30 billion yen ($319 million).
Bloomberg – Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co., with 23 trillion yen ($244 billion) in assets, said it will cut its investments in hedge funds this year as it switches to investments with steadier returns.
Japan’s third-largest life insurer will reduce its allocation to the industry by “several tens of billions of yen,” from 64.6 billion yen at the end of last fiscal year through March 31, said Shinji Makino, manager of the insurer’s investment planning division. The Tokyo-based insurer last year slashed its hedge-fund holdings by more than 40 billion yen.
Bloomberg – Sumitomo Trust Finance (H.K.) Ltd., the asset-management unit of Japan’s fifth-biggest bank, will start a new multi-strategy hedge fund that invests in Japanese stocks, index options, futures and credit-default swaps.
The Tactical Equity Concepts-Japan Fund, also called TEC- Japan, will start June 29 with 10 billion yen ($105 million) of seed money from parent Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co., said Kota Murakami, the Hong Kong-based head of Sumitomo Trust Finance’s investment management group. The fund aims to raise assets to as much as 60 billion yen over the next couple of years, he said.
Bloomberg – Alphex Investments Co., the adviser to Japan’s first short-biased hedge fund, plans to sell exporters’ shares, wagering they’ll fall on a rising yen and weak global economy, boosting the fund that started in March.
“What we’re seeing right now is nothing more than a bear- market rally,” Ichiro Takamatsu, 44, chief executive officer of the Tokyo-based hedge fund advisory firm, said in an interview yesterday. “We’re going to see a really bad yen rally this year, and that will create an opportunity to profit on exporters.”
The firm started its ASB Opportunity Fund on March 3 with $25 million of seed funding from a New York fund-of-funds seeking to diversify its portfolio, said Takamatsu. The ASB fund, with a net short position at all times, is the first of its kind in Japan, he said.
Reuters Tokyo – Japanese equity fund Unison Capital said on Monday it has raised its planned offer for shares in wig maker Aderans Holdings by 20 percent to 1,200 yen per share.
Unsion Capital and Aderans are locked in a battle with U.S. hedge fund Steel Partners for shareholder votes at Aderans’ annual meeting scheduled for Thursday.
Bloomberg – The yen declined to a two-week low versus the euro and weakened against the dollar after Yonhap News said North Korea launched a short-range missile, posing a threat to the region’s security.
South Korea’s won fell for the first time in three days versus the dollar after North Korea said it also “successfully” tested a nuclear weapon underground. The euro approached a four-month high against the dollar before a report that economists say will show German business confidence rose for a second month. The New Zealand dollar fell versus the greenback on concern export revenue will drop after the U.S. increased subsidies for dairy products.
Bloomberg – Aozora Bank Ltd., the Japanese lender controlled by Cerberus Capital Management LP, posted its first loss in a decade, after investments in U.S. lender GMAC LLC and Bernard Madoff soured.
The bank booked a 242.6 billion yen ($2.5 billion) deficit in the year ended March 31, compared with a profit of 5.93 billion yen a year earlier, it said in a statement today. It lost 35.8 billion yen on U.S. auto financing company GMAC.
Aozora, rescued by Japan’s government during the 1990s banking crisis, has pledged to focus on domestic lending after racking up losses in the U.S. Chief Executive Officer Brian Prince, who replaced Federico Sacasa on Feb. 10 when the bank forecast a loss, declined to comment on reports he merge the company with Shinsei Bank Ltd.
Guardian Unlimited – Japanese government bond futures fell on Monday, edging back towards six-month lows hit earlier this month, with traders citing selling by hedge funds on the back of concerns about rising debt issuance.
The Ministry of Finance said it would issue an additional 16.9 trillionyen ($175 billion) in JGBs in the fiscal year that ends next March to pay for an economic stimulus package.
The extra supply, which will start coming to the market in July, will increase calendar base JGB issuance in fiscal 2009/10 by roughly 15 percent to a total of 130.2 trillionyen.
Interactive Investor – Japan’s Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Co said on Monday it planned to cut its unhedged foreign bond holdings while increasing its hedged foreign bond holdings this business year to offset currency risks.
The nation’s third-largest life insurer by assets also said it has been experimenting with trades in yen swap rates since March to seek higher yields, and said it would boost its yen bond holdings mostly in super-long Japanese government bonds.
Meiji Yasuda said it planned to reduce its unhedged foreign bond holdings by about 100 billion yen ($997 million), and raise its currency-hedged foreign bond holdings by 200 billion yen in the year to March 2010.
Bloomberg – Tadashi Mukai, returning to run his own his hedge fund after being the nation’s top performer in 2007, posted a 2.1 percent gain in March for his Wisdom of Japan Fund by betting on rising and falling stock prices.
The Epic Partners Investments Co. fund, which employs a so- called market-neutral strategy, doubled initial assets to 850 million yen ($8.5 million) since starting March 2, according to Mukai. The 44-year-old, who joined Epic in August and has managed market-neutral funds for eight years, aims to raise 10 billion yen from investors for the fund within a year.
