25/02/2010 Author: Tony Griffiths

HFMWeek Daily Snapshot - 25 February

NEWSPAPERS & WIRES
Hedge fund supervisors worldwide will require hedge funds to provide uniform data across jurisdictions from September in a bid to spot broader risks more quickly, a global regulatory body said today, Reuters reports. The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (Iosco) published a template for supervisors listing 11 types of data that hedge funds will be required to provide. "Iosco believes that regulators should seek to develop a comparable and consistent set of data to be collected from local hedge fund managers and advisers to monitor systemic risks and prevent gaps in regulator reporting requirements," Kathleen Casey, chairman of the body's technical committee, said in a statement.
 
The Alternative Investment Management Association (Aima) – the global hedge fund industry association – has welcomed the hedge fund survey published by the UK’s FSA which concluded that the industry does not pose a systemic risk and features relatively low levels of leverage. Andrew Baker, Aima’s CEO, said: “These striking conclusions from the lead regulator for the industry in Europe are of clear relevance to the on-going debate about the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive in Europe. If the industry does not pose a systemic risk and features relatively low levels of leverage then additional regulation should not be disproportionate and punitive.”
 
Florida’s state pension system, manager of $112bn for a million firefighters, teachers and garbage collectors, is set to decide next week on the size of its first investment in hedge funds, reports Bloomberg. Executives of the fourth-largest state retirement programme in the US, who have considered putting money into the private pools of capital since 2007, will make the move amid a 7% shortfall in its ability to pay future benefits, the first in 13 years. Wisconsin’s pension also plans its initial allocation this year, while Boeing Co’s probably will raise its holdings.
 
The British financial regulator won a court appeal giving it the power to force a Panama distressed-debt fund to turn over documents as part of a US investigation into illegal short-selling, says Bloomberg. The UK FSA had the right to get British investigators to follow a request by the US SEC to assist with a probe into Amro International, a London appeals court ruled today. Amro had successfully argued at a lower court in August that the SEC had issued an overly broad order in its inquiry of two New York-based hedge funds over 2001 short-sales of Sedona Corp shares.
 
Saka Capital, the Singapore-based credit hedge fund manager, has today announced the appointment of Carne Global Financial Services to provide the Saka Capital Liquid Credit Fund with directorship services. Peter Heaps, Managing Director of Carne Cayman Islands, has been appointed non-executive director on the board of the fund. Peter is a member of Carne’s independent directorship panel, which was launched in November 2007 and now supplies directors in Cayman, Dublin, Luxemburg, Switzerland and Dubai. Non-executive, independent directors provided by Carne Global are highly qualified and ideally placed to discharge such fiduciary responsibilities.
 
Frank Yu, a former managing director at US hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, is seeking to raise up to $500m for a China-focused private equity fund, reports Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the situation. Yu is starting his own private equity firm, called Themes Investment Partners. The firm has just completed its first round of fund-raising and expects to start doing deals in the coming months in a broad range of sectors, according to a person familiar with the situation.
 
Late last week, prosecutors arrested Milton Balkany, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and director of New York-based religious school, for trying to persuade a hedge fund manager to donate $4m to two schools in return for keeping an imprisoned investment manager from talking about the fund's alleged insider trading deals. According to the government's allegations, Balkany was trying to take advantage of media reports that prosecutors might be targeting hedge fund SAC in an ongoing investigation into insider trading in the hedge fund industry. Legal sources identified Hayim Regensberg as the inmate whom Balkany said he had spoken to about SAC. Regensberg was convicted last year of defrauding about a dozen people in a three-year long Ponzi scheme, Reuters reports.
 
Florida fund manager Arthur G Nadel pleaded guilty to operating a seven-year fraud yesterday, admitting to defrauding investors in six funds and costing them $162m, reports the WSJ. Nadel, appearing in US District Court in Manhattan before Judge John Koetl, pleaded guilty to all 15 charges he faced in an indictment, including mail fraud, wire fraud and securities fraud.