Posts tagged 'Hedge Funds'

Geoff Grant’s lost ‘edge’

David joined the FT in 2011 as a Marjorie Deane fellow. He covered emerging markets, equities and currencies before making the jump over to FT Alphaville in May 2012.

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| Oct 30 2012 13:32 | Comment |

Grant Capital Partners is being shut down. This hedge-fund manager wind-down is brought to you by Geoff Grant, one of the same gentlemen behind Peloton Partners’ enormous fall.

Fun fact from the FT’s Sam Jones:

Grant Capital eschewed the asset-backed securities and heavy leverage that led to the downfall of Peloton and focused on highly liquid instruments such as currencies, bonds and interest rate derivatives.

While funds that specialise in trading mortgages have enjoyed some of their best returns in the past two years, global macro funds have floundered.

Oops. Read more

Hedgie billionaires: we’re a sleeper cell of battered wives headed by the pope…

| Oct 01 2012 20:06 | Comment |

… or something. You can’t make these people up:

[Anthony] Scaramucci, the organizer of the dinner, told me the next day that the guests had witnessed the “activation” of a “sleeper cell” of hedge-fund managers against Obama. “That’s what you see happening in the hedge-fund community, because they now have the power, because of Citizens United, to aggregate capital into political-action committees and to influence the debate,” he said. “The President has a philosophy of disdain toward wealth creation. That’s just obvious, O.K.? We talked about it all night.” He later said, “If there’s a pope of this movement, it’s Lee Cooperman.” Read more

What about some info Glenstrata? – updated

| Sep 07 2012 08:22 | Comment |

At around 8.20am this morning, there was some news from the Theatre-Casino in Zug.

Xstrata had adjourned EGM for the $80bn merger following a “development”. Read more

Mitt Romney and Man U (and PE management fees)

| Aug 23 2012 19:09 | Comment |

It’s an indirect path from one to the other.

Gawker on Thursday unloaded some 950 pages of filings from Bain Capital-affiliated offshore funds in which Mitt Romney has invested his fortunes over the years. We’re still reading through the docs, though Dan Primack (who’s already read through them) thinks there’s not much to the issue. Read more

‘Hi, please can you help us with our front-running. Ta!’ (Updated)

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Jul 16 2012 12:07 | Comment |

From the New York Times, a Gretchen Morgenson report into an apparently widespread practice of Wall Street analysts giving private equity clients and hedge funds a heads up into their thinking, via the hedgies’ monthly or quarterly “questionnaires”:

The funds say they ask only for public information, but in at least four cases, documents from Barclays Global Investors, now a unit of BlackRock, state the goal is to receive nonpublic information. Two documents state that the surveys allow for front-running analyst recommendations. Read more

Of trillions and trilemmas

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Jun 20 2012 13:43 | Comment |

From an engaging speech by Robert Jenkins — former F&C chairman, now a member of the Bank of England’s interim Financial Policy Committee — to the “trillion dollar generation” of hedgies at the Gaim conference in Monaco…

My third and final observation is that the days of instant market pricing and limitless liquidity may be fading. The “great moderation” conditioned many to underestimate credit risk. It also bred a generation of traders, money managers, bankers and risk officers to presume an unfettered flow of capital and instant access to narrow bid/offer spreads. Those of you who operate in less liquid instruments do not need reminding. You deal with it daily. Those of you who traded asset backed securities in 2008 can testify to the speed with which liquidity can disappear. Yet despite these examples, many continue to assume that at the currently liquid end of the trading security spectrum “liquidity” is free and will be freely available. Short term traders count on it; algo-trading depends on it. Long/short strategies presume you can short. Stop-loss disciplines demand you can cover – and cover quickly. Read more

The euro and the “hope” trade

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| Jun 06 2012 21:54 | Comment |

One other thing from Wednesday’s SocGen Hedge Fund Watch that’s worth noting, especially given the ECB’s decision to hold rates steady earlier today:

 Read more

Hedgies reposition on the long bond

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| Jun 06 2012 18:41 | Comment |

From the latest SocGen Hedge Fund Watch, this is new:

 Read more

A small, last minute cash call…

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| May 23 2012 17:42 | Comment |

Three Alphavillans are running around Canary Wharf in East London this evening in support of the British Heart Foundation.

Left to right: Lisa Pollack, David Keohane and Masa Serdarevic Read more

Hedge funds are flying high

Masa joined the FT in 2009 and has worked on a number of desks across the paper, including Companies, Markets and Comment. She spent much of 2010 in New York covering the US equity markets. But earlier this year she finally saw the light and moved to Alphaville.

She started her career in the investment banking division at Lehman Brothers in the summer of 2007, timing it perfectly with the beginning of the credit crunch.

She studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University.

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| May 08 2012 15:24 | Comment |

Five months in and it’s been a pretty good year for hedge funds with the HFRI fund weighted composite index up 4.4 per cent year to date, following its strongest first quarter performance since 2006. The index fell 5.25 per cent last year.

There was a small 0.36 per cent fall last month, but it’s unlikely to deter investors who have been scrambling to take advantage of the strong start to the year. Total hedge fund capital reached a dizzying record $2.13tn at the end of last quarter on a mix of performance and net inflows, according to Hedge Fund Research estimates. Read more

Those Cam dine with me donors

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Mar 26 2012 13:56 | Comment |

There are a few familiar City faces in the list of Conservative party donors who have “privately” dined with the Prime Minister at No 10…

(H/T the New Statesman) Read more

Greece optimistic about moving closer to swap

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

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| Mar 08 2012 10:29 | Comment |

Greece has moved a step closer to completing its debt restructuring after a raft of bondholders agreed to participate in its upcoming debt restructuring swap, likely enabling the troubled nation to force the deal through, the Wall Street Journal reports. As of late Wednesday, about 52 per cent of the €206bn in bonds up for restructuring had been pledged. Reuters reports that major banks and pension funds have now also thrown their weight behind Greece’s bond swap offer to private investors, making it increasingly likely that the deal will pass, averting an immediate default. “The pace of responses to the bond offer is good, the percentage of bondholders tendering voluntarily is very high,” a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters. “It is going well, we are optimistic,” he said. Some hedge funds and several Greek pension funds are still holding out, however, reports the FT. Shares in Europe, nevertheless, were still lifted by the progress. Read more

US bourses to fine HFT data-cloggers

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Mar 08 2012 05:05 | Comment |

Two of the biggest US stock exchanges are set to impose penalties on high-frequency traders who clog the markets’ data pipes with unnecessary messages that do not result in trades, the FT reports. This move comes as Mary Schapiro, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently expressed worries that such activity might be disruptive to markets. Nasdaq and Direct Edge on Wednesday announced schemes designed to promote more efficient trading by automated traders using sophisticated algorithms. Such “algos” send bursts of quotes that are then cancelled or replaced with new quotes in milliseconds once they figure out the market’s direction. This follows similar moves earlier this month by European stock exchange groups Deutsche Börseand Borsa Italiana. The other big US exchanges, New York Stock Exchange and BATS, have incentives in place for efficient trading in stocks listed on their markets, but do not yet have similar penalties. Read more

Dalio takes hedge crown from Soros

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 29 2012 05:24 | Comment |

Ray Dalio has overtaken George Soros as the world’s most successful hedge fund manager after his Bridgewater Pure Alpha fund made $13.8bn for investors last year, says the FT. The profits made by the Connecticut-based Pure Alpha – already the world’s biggest hedge fund, with $72bn under management using its trading strategy – beat its own record for the largest one-year dollar gain last year. However, the ranking by LCH Investments, part of the Edmund de Rothschild group, also showed last year the biggest-ever loss by a hedge fund. John Paulson’s New York-based Paulson & Co lost investors $9.6bn last year, more than was lost in the collapse of Long Term Capital Management in 1998. But Mr Paulson is still ranked third for the best overall returns for investors, at $22.6bn. Read more

Gordon Gekko tells Wall St greed is not good

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Feb 28 2012 10:16 | Comment |

Michael Douglas is playing a new and unlikely role as spokesman for the US Federal Bureau of Investigation in its war against corruption on Wall Street, the FT reports. The Hollywood actor – famous for his line “greed is good” in the 1987 film Wall Street – is sending a new message in a public service announcement, telling traders and brokers that insider trading is a serious crime. The FBI’s New York office, which prioritises white-collar crime, hopes the 60-second segment will reach traders and hedge fund portfolio managers who might be tempted to cross the line between trading on legal stock research and trading illegally on secretive non-public information. The WSJ reports that federal authorities are currently pursuing insider trading cases against 120 individuals. Since late 2009, prosecutors have won 57 convictions or guilty pleas out of the 66 individuals that have had cases bought against them. Read more

Obama and Romney unveil rival tax plans

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Feb 23 2012 10:04 | Comment |

President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, his most likely Republican rival in this year’s election, battled for the mantle of tax reformer as they released competing visions for comprehensive reform, the FT reports. Mr Obama set out a plan that could change where global companies choose to invest by cutting the US corporate tax rate from 35 to 28 per cent, imposing a minimum tax on profits US companies earn in offshore tax havens, and eliminating tax breaks except for manufacturing and research. He also wants to raise billions of dollars via a “Buffett rule” that would mean people making more than $1m a year have to pay a minimum of 30 per cent of their income in tax, but he has not set out a detailed plan for personal tax reform. In a move that may increase his appeal to conservative Republican primary voters, Mr Romney proposed aggressive cuts to personal income tax rates, calling for a one-fifth reduction in each of today’s marginal rates. The new rates would range from 8 to 28 per cent. Read more

Hedge funds exit stage left, pursued by bearishness

Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company. She's now the Head of New Projects for FT.com.

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| Feb 20 2012 12:40 | Comment |

LONDON—World-renowned news and opinion magazine The Economist announced plans to suspend any new online and print content for the next month in an effort to finally allow subscribers a chance to catch up. “It’s only fair to our readers,” said Economist editor Winthrop Parker, adding that there was no reason for subscribers to feel ashamed for not necessarily knowing every last detail about the current economic and geopolitical climate.

Unfortunately, it isn’t true — the above is from The Onion. Read more

The hedgies’ tool of choice

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 15 2012 08:52 | Comment |

The letter.

From an old New Yorker story on Daniel Loeb: Read more

Paulson calls for Hartford split

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 15 2012 03:35 | Comment |

John Paulson, the billionaire investor, has taken public his efforts to get The Hartford Financial Services Group to split into two companies, says the FT. The Hartford, like other insurers, has been under pressure in its life insurance business as interest rates hover near zero, making it difficult to generate the income to cover pay-outs on products like annuities. At the same time, it has participated in an industry-wide increase in pricing in its separate property and casualty business to make up for disaster-related losses last year. Mr Paulson, the largest shareholder in The Hartford with an 8.4 per cent stake, published a letter to the company on Tuesdayblaming its underperformance on the combination of its two businesses. He said it is too complex for analysts to properly value and that most other insurers have chosen to focus on one or the other business. Meanwhile Bloomberg reports Mr Paulson sold his entire stakes in Citigroup and Bank of America in the fourth quarter before the shares rallied. Paulson & Co, which owned $643m worth of Citigroup at the end of the third quarter, had sold its entire 25.1m shares as of December 31, the firm said on Tuesday in a filing with the SEC. He also sold $394m worth of Bank of America, or 64.3m shares. It also sold its 998,900 shares of BlackRock valued at $146m. Read more

Hedge funds ride European bank rally

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 14 2012 05:07 | Comment |

Leading hedge funds have profited heavily from a rally in European banking stocks in recent weeks and are wagering that their gains will continue amid fresh measures to inject liquidity into the financial system from central banks, says the FT. This year has seen some of the strongest performance numbers from equity-focused hedge fund managers since 2009. The average equity long/short hedge fund returned 3.8 per cent in January and is provisionally up 1.6 per cent for February, according to Hedge Fund Research. Bets in banks such as Italy’s UniCredit, Spain’s Santander and the UK’s Barclays have made some hedge funds millions. Among big hedge fund gainers in the past six weeks have been Toscafund, run by the former Tiger Management star trader Martin Hughes, which has seen its flagship fund gain 7 per cent. A more specialist fund run by Mr Hughes himself is up more than 18 per cent. Crispin Odey’s flagship European hedge fund rose 14.7 per cent in January alone while Lansdowne Partners saw its flagship UK fund rise 5.7 per cent. Fund managers are unequivocal that it has been the European Central Bank’s Long Term Refinancing Operations lie behind their gains. Read more

John Paulson vs Hartford Financial

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 09 2012 08:50 | Comment |

You’ll have to imagine how it sounded.

But here’s an interesting demonstration of John Paulson at work… stepping onto Hartford Financial’s earnings conference call to lambast the insurer’s performance. Shares in Hartford dropped 39 per cent last year. Paulson’s the biggest holder. Read more

Further reading

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Feb 09 2012 08:15 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Thursday,

- No, banks shouldn’t be in the tail risk-selling business. Read more

Bruising year for commodities hedge funds

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 01 2012 00:51 | Comment |

The commodities hedge fund industry has suffered its worst year in more than a decade as the sector’s top managers recorded heavy losses amid volatile markets, the FT reports. The average commodity hedge fund fell 1.7 per cent in 2011, according to a closely watched index compiled by Newedge, the first loss since the index was created in 2000 and down from a rise of 10.7 per cent in 2010. The drop came as multibillion-dollar commodities hedge funds such as Blenheim, Clive Capital, BlueGold and Merchant posted double-digit losses for the year. The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a basket of commodities, fell 8.3 per cent during the year, weighed down by falling prices for metals and agricultural raw materials.

  Read more

Deutsche Bank targets hedge funds’ problem assets

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Jan 30 2012 02:33 | Comment |

Deutsche Bank is preparing to launch a fund to snap up investors’ illiquid or damaged holdings in hedge funds that have failed to recover since the financial crisis, the FT reports, citing people familiar with the launch. The fund, which Deutsche is launching in partnership with New York-based Rosebrook Capital, will set out to raise $500m  The bank estimates that, three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, investors are sitting on between $80bn and $100bn of hard-to-sell hedge fund assets that could prove lucrative in the coming years. Big opportunities are being created by financial regulations such as Basel II and Solvency III, which are making banks and insurance companies forced sellers of problem assets. Read more

Further reading

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

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| Jan 27 2012 08:26 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Friday,

- The high yield ETF is really, really popular. Read more

SocGen: hedgies short euro against dollar “like never before”

Cardiff writes mostly about US macroeconomic issues, with daily excursions into other topics about which he claim no expertise. Before Alphaville, Cardiff spent a little more than two years as a reporter at Dow Jones Financial News covering investment banking, asset management, and private equity. Along the way he has written freelance pieces on a variety of other topics from behavioural psychology to Muay Thai, the latter also being a personal interest that involves frequently getting kicked in the shins (and torso, and head).

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| Jan 26 2012 19:42 | Comment |

A chart from SocGen’s latest Hedge Fund Watch showing that as of last week, hedge funds were short the Euro against the dollar “like never before”…

 Read more

Einhorn, UK FSA’s high-profile target

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Jan 26 2012 09:39 | Comment |

David Einhorn’s personal £3.6m ($5.6m) fine from the UK’s FSA for market abuse amounts to the second largest individual penalty for  in the regulator’s history, and finally gives it a high-profile scalp, the FT says. Few US hedge fund managers come more high-profile than Einhorn, who often seeks publicity for controversial shorts, reports the WSJ. In a conference call with investors in his Greenlight Capital fund, Einhorn disputed the FSA’s ruling. “This is like a traffic cop with a quota at the end of the month, with a faulty radar detector,” he said, according to Dealbreaker. Read more

Further reading

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Jan 26 2012 08:26 | Comment |

Elsewhere on Thursday,

- The internet Web: French. Read more

Einhorn and Greenlight fined £7.2m

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Jan 26 2012 04:03 | Comment |

David Einhorn, one of the world’s highest profile hedge fund managers, and his firm, Greenlight Capital, have been fined £7.2m by UK regulators for trading ahead of a 2009 equity fundraising by Punch Taverns, the FT reports. Mr Einhorn, who will personally pay £3.6m, is the most prominent figure to be ensnared by the UK Financial Services Authority, which has traditionally lagged behind US enforcers in tackling market abuse. His fine is the second largest ever handed down by the FSA to an individual for market abuse and will send a chill through the City. The case is a key step in the FSA’s campaign to hold market professionals to account and to tackle the high rates of suspicious trading ahead of mergers and rights issues. The WSJ says it represents a rare instance when a hedge-fund manager is personally held responsible for allegedly improper trading.

  Read more

Hedge bashers

Paul Murphy is the founding editor of FT Alphaville.

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| Jan 25 2012 16:05 | Comment |

This document had previously passed this correspondent by: DP12/1 - Implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive. H/T Sarah Butcher.

 Read more

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