Barron’s – Here are some of the opportunities hedge-fund investors are likely to hear more about in 2014. In many cases, these are risk-taking opportunities, from syndicated loans to mortgages, that U.S. and foreign banks can no longer afford to exploit.
European Bank Loans: The region’s lenders are in a hurry to unload these assets to conform to the new Basel III banking rules. These measures require them to sharply increase their capital levels relative to their assets by 2019. This shift was supposed to be well under way by now, but regulators gave the banks some leeway in light of the Continent’s recent debt problems; now there’s more urgency to sell before 2014’s regulatory “stress tests,” and hedge funds have begun to buy nonperforming loans.
