Bloomberg – Galleon Group, the $7.5 billion hedge-fun firm founded by Sri Lankan-born Raj Rajaratnam, plans to set up an Asian portfolio that will trade bonds, interest rates and currencies by betting on macroeconomic trends.
The macro fund will start at $250 million and increase to $1 billion by the end of the year, Rajaratnam said in an interview today from New York, where the company is based.
The firm, which has invested $200 million to $300 million in private Chinese and Indian companies, also plans to start an Asian private-equity fund in 2009, he said. Galleon opened an office in Singapore earlier this year, moving 10 investment professionals from New York. It’s also hiring more from the region, home to the world’s two fastest-growing major economies, India and China.
“Asia is a major focus for us at the firm,” Rajaratnam, 50, said. “The growth is there.”
The team in Singapore currently manages the firm’s $1.5 billion Asian long-short stock fund. Long-short managers buy stocks they expect to rise and hedge those bets with short sales. In a short sale, an investor sells borrowed stock expecting to repay the loan with shares repurchased after the price falls.
