25/08/2010
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
Hedge fund founder Alan Howard has paid out £86.1m ($132.9m) in profits to just 33 partners at his firm, Brevan Howard, reveals the Telegraph. The hedge fund made almost £700m ($1080.1m) in fees for the eight months to March 2009, a period that saw the collapse of the credit markets, the implosion of Lehman Brothers and the FTSE 100 diving below 3,500. But while rival funds were hit hard by collapsing markets and investor redemptions, Brevan saw its fee income jump 31% last year from £530m in 2008. The firm's limited liability partnership posted £68.6m ($105.9bn)
25/08/2010
SEI, a global provider of outsourced asset management, has expanded its middle office outsourcing services to include collateral management for OTC derivatives, as fund managers continue to place more emphasis on counterparty risk management.
The expansion is expected to provide the firm’s asset manager clients with a better system with which to manage counterparty exposure.
As part of this process, SEI will perform daily collateral management functions on behalf of its clients, such as managing and electronically storing legal agreements, and calculating and notifying interest on collateral.
The firm has also entered into
25/08/2010
Alternative investment giant Man Group has announced that Luke Ellis is to take over as head of its Multi-Manager business following the retirement of Herbert Item, who has been at the firm for 13 years.
In the role, Ellis’s main responsibility will be to continue to build out Man’s multi-manager range of investment solutions for private and institutional clients. The business currently manages assets of $14.2bn.
Ellis has over 25 years’ investment management experience and previously held senior positions including head of JPMorgan’s Global Equity Derivatives and Equity Proprietary Trading businesses and most recently, as
24/08/2010
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
The boyfriend of a former Walt Disney administrative assistant admitted to engaging in a scheme to sell early access to the company's earnings report in US district court in Manhattan yesterday, reports the Wall Street Journal. Yonni Sebbag and his girlfriend Bonnie Hoxie, the former assistant to Disney's head of communications, allegedly contacted more than a dozen hedge funds and investment companies anonymously in March, offering to provide an early look at Disney's earnings."I disclosed material and non-public information about the Walt Disney to outside investors," Sebbag said. Sebbag pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit securities
23/08/2010
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
Hedge funds cut bullish bets on gasoline by the most in almost four years as petroleum stockpiles surpassed the highest level since 1990 and the US vacation season drew to an end, reports Bloomberg. Hedge funds and other large speculators reduced wagers on rising prices by 74% the week ended 17 August, the most since October 2006, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported on 20 August. Gasoline has dropped 21% since reaching its 2010 high of $2.4351 a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange on 3 May. “People are just taking money off the table.”
23/08/2010
Specialist investment management firm Merrion has revealed plans to market its global macro long/short hedge fund to a wider audience of international professional investors, following three years of strong performance.
Merrion High Alpha Fund is an Irish regulated qualified investor fund (QIF), with around €50m in assets under management, most of which was raised by domestic professional investors, including pension funds and corporate funds.
The QIF is up 103% since its launch in August 2007, equating to 26.6% per annum, compared to the performance of the FTSE World Index, which has fallen by 12.9% over
20/08/2010
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
A variety of hedge fund giants, including John Paulson and George Soros, are using a $50bn exchange-traded fund to buy gold, according to the Wall Street Journal, despite the demand for commodity ETFs being very independent. Eton Park Capital Management showed it had joined a list of hedge funds that own SPDR Gold Shares, an ETF backed by about 1,300 metric tons of the precious metal earlier this week. Eton revealed an $800m estimate stake in the ETF. Paulson & Co kept its stake in the gold ETF steady at 31.5 million shares, with its position close
19/08/2010
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
Stanley F. Druckenmiller, the hedge fund magnate who led George Soros’s famous bet against the British pound, is calling it quits and shutting down his investment firm, Duquesne Capital, reports the New York Times. Druckenmiller wrote in a letter to investors that he had grown increasingly dissatisfied with the pressures of running a big fund, and that while Duquesne Capital was on track to yet another positive return, it was not performing up to his personal standards. “I have had to recognise that competing in the markets over such a long timeframe imposes heavy personal costs,” he wrote. “While the
19/08/2010
Emerging markets (EM) hedge funds suffered a net withdrawal of $1.5bn in the second quarter of 2010, according to figures released today by Hedge Fund Research.
This decline represents the seventh of the last eight quarters in which EM hedge funds have experienced a net capital withdrawal, while total capital invested in EM hedge funds during Q2 has declined by $3.2bn, ending the quarter at just under $95bn (taking into account performance-based losses as well as redemptions).
The outflows are in stark contrast to the performance of hedge fund industry as a whole, which experienced
18/08/2010
NEWSPAPERS AND WIRES
UK asset manager Gartmore is looking to take advantage of the "Volcker rule" by hiring proprietary traders from banks to boost its hedge-fund activities, as it seeks to move on from the resignation of star fund manager Guillaume Rambourg, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Volcker rule, which is part of the US financial-overhaul bill, will force many US banks to divest proprietary-trading activities (or in-house trading with the firm's own capital) and private-equity investments. Gartmore said yesterday that, as of 30 June, its assets under management had slipped 15% to £19.9bn ($31.2bn), from £23.5bn
