03/02/2012

HFMWeek Daily Snapshot - 3 February

NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
Lansdowne Partners, one of Europe's biggest hedge fund managers, saw its flagship UK fund return 5.7% in January, in a sign the industry is benefiting from a rebound in financial markets this year after a torrid 2011, writes Reuters. The gains come after the fund, which is run by Stuart Roden and Peter Davies and which made millions shorting banks during the financial crisis, lost around 20% in 2011 when some bets on financial stocks turned sour.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Steven Cohen of SAC Capital Advisors, who is among the bidders for Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers, is close to buying a $20m stake in the New York Mets, a person with direct knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg. The piece in the cash-strapped Mets wouldn’t bar Cohen from owning the Dodgers, who are being sold in an auction by Frank McCourt, said the person, who was granted anonymity because no one is authorized to discuss either sale publicly.

HSBC Holdings' New York hedge fund administration unit is the latest victim of the bank's cutbacks in the US, according to FINAlternatives. HSBC said it would close the division of HSBC Securities Services in the US, potentially costing 200 people in New York their jobs. The bank said it will move the business to Dublin, Ireland, where it already has a substantial administration presence. But it won't be taking all of its clients with it to the Emerald Isle: HSBC has reportedly told some clients they should seek other fund administrators.

Kyle Bass, the Dallas hedge-fund manager, urged overseers of Texas's  state university endowment, the second-largest US college fund, to stick with a $1bn investment in gold bullion even as the fund’s assets decline, Bloomberg reports. “I’m against selling any of the gold,” Bass said today at a meeting of fund directors in Austin, citing the need for a hedge against mounting risks driven by government deficits in the U.S. and Europe. “As every day goes by, I see deflation in the things you own and inflation in the things you need.”

BNP Paribas has launched an iPad app in the hope that hedge fund managers will want to check out their stock holdings on the move, writes the FT. “You can get off an airplane and in one minute see everything that’s happening in your portfolio,” says Sam Hocking, head of prime brokerage sales for the French Bank. No one had actually asked for such an app, something that retail brokers have been touting to the public for months.