04/03/2010
Pension and endowment funds are piling into the secondary markets, as they attempt to pick up bargain stakes in top-performing hedge funds.
The flurry of recent interest, an upswing of almost 100%, according to secondary market platform Hedgebay, is in contrast to the generally static nature of the ‘second hand’ hedge fund space, which has returned to normal trading conditions following a busy period at the end of 2009.
Elias Tueta, founder of Hedgebay, describes current interest from the institutional sector as, “being at an all-time high, with pension and endowment funds looking at top-performing
04/03/2010
The Florida State University (FSU) Foundation has almost entirely moved its hedge fund portfolio to direct investments
The $399m fund was previously split 50/50 between funds of hedge funds (FoHFs) and single managers, but is nearing completion as a direct portfolio, Jerr Ganz, chief financial officer at the FSU Foundation, revealed.
“We continue to make manager changes depending on alterations within the funds, such as transparency issues or funds that were previously closed opening up for new investments,” he said. The Foundation recently approved an investment in a hedge fund that was previously closed to new investors.
04/03/2010
Prime brokers have given short shrift to the SEC’s latest attempts to corral the actions of hedge funds through shorting restrictions.
On 24 February, the head of the SEC, Mary Schapiro, announced new rules that restricted the short-selling of a stock if it experienced significant downward pressure, specifically if a security's price falls more than 10% in one day.
Members of mid-tier brokerages were less concerned about any potential falling revenues and more worried about the responsibility of monitoring. “I'm more concerned about monitoring it from a compliance standpoint,” Glen Dailey, head of prime brokerage,
04/03/2010
The rankings have taken on a very strange guise early in the year, a look that could very well run through most of 2010 if market sentiment doesn’t shore-up.
Based on European, and in particular UK, numbers there are very few signs of a turnaround. As such, the short-bias funds have made a strong start to the year, as have distressed strategies; both up more than 2.6% in January trading.
Notably, returns from the more liquid fixed income strategies have also performed well, with fixed income arbitrage up 1.96%. In contrast, many of the trend-following
04/03/2010
We’ve heard this before, but 2010 really could be a make-or-break year for the fund of hedge funds (FoHF) industry.
Already, the business model has changed dramatically from what it was 18 months ago; now a provider of liquidity and bespoke mandates to institutions, rather than a straightforward comingled product provider. In this way, it’s becoming more difficult to gauge the strategy's success based solely on returns, since this doesn’t account for individual institutional mandates, which make up more and more of the industry, particularly for the larger FoHFs.
Even so, with around 1,500 FoHFs
04/03/2010
The University of California’s $63bn portfolio of retirement and endowment funds made significant allocations to hedge funds across a number of strategies at the end of last year, and is now carving out new allocations to real assets and opportunistic strategies.
During the final quarter of 2009, the Office of the Treasurer, which manages the $36.5bn University of California Retirement Plan (UCRP) and the $5.8bn General Endowment Pool (GEP) among others, made new allocations to hedge fund managers across Europe-focused event driven equity, relative value credit, event driven credit and global macro.
“These allocations included
04/03/2010
The Endowment management committee for the University of Houston System Board of Regents (UH System) has voted to increase its absolute return and long/short equity allocation targets, in order to be more reactive to market volatility.
According to recently revealed minutes from the committee’s meeting in August last year, Cambridge Associates, investment consultant to the $400m UH System endowment, recommended changes to its investment policy following a review process.
Cambridge recommended UH System increase its allocation range for absolute return managers from 5%-10% to 5%-15%, and increased its long/short equity managers allocation, also from 5%-10%
04/03/2010
Schonfeld Group Holdings, a New York-based proprietary trading and investment firm, will significantly increase its allocations this year.
Andrew Fishman, president, said the firm will deploy capital to quantitative and systematic traders, along with traditional long/short hedge fund managers.
“We think on the quantitative side there is more talent because of what is going on on Wall Street, but in the traditional hedge fund space, the capital raising is more difficult for smaller firms, which presents an opportunity to invest with them,” he said.
Schonfeld is looking for directional black box strategies as
04/03/2010
Craig Beresin, formerly of Barclays Capital, and Alvin Loshak, previously of Credit Suisse, have set up their maiden hedge fund, supported by a number of seed deals from high-net-worth investors.
According to an HFMWeek source, the duo formed New York-based Beresin Loshak Asset Management and the flagship hedge fund, called the Beresin Loshak US Fund, launched 1 March. The offering is a value-driven global macro fund which runs a derivative overlay strategy. It debuted with approximately $25m and has an initial capacity of $100m.
The fund has a $1m investment minimum, 2/20 fees, no lockup
04/03/2010
Evolvence Capital, the Dubai-based $1bn alternative asset manager focused on the Middle East, North Africa and India, has decided it will no longer take third-party capital for its Evolvence Mena Hedge Fund and will be solely a vehicle for proprietary trading, HFMWeek has learned.
The manager announced the decision to close the fund to outside investment in an investor letter. The fund, which launched two years ago, invests in both equities and corporate bonds and implements a multi-strategy approach. It allocates to Mena blue chip companies based on both fundamental and opportunistic approaches.
In January,
