Hedge Fund Industry Intelligence

Boutique law firm Kleinberg Kaplan has appointed Joshua M Kaplan as a partner in its Estate Planning and Administration Practice. He joins from Dechert.

Refinitiv has expanded its long term partnership with Antara, Indonesia's national news agency to provide customers with access to in-depth news and information in Bahasa Indonesian and English across Refinitiv's products, including via Eikon.

State Street Corporation has appointed Brian Franz as chief information officer (CIO). Franz, who joins the Company in January 2020, will report to Chief Operating Officer, Lou Maiuri and become a member of State Street’s Management Committee, its senior-most strategy and policy making group.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg

Following the announcement of their strategic partnership in September 2019, Sanne and Colmore have now entered into the next phase of development.

NZX and the European Energy Exchange (EEX) have announced a Co-operation Agreement with a focus on securing new opportunities in the New Zealand carbon market.

CoinDesk

HedgeCo.net

The National

Business Day

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Marketing is an increasingly important aspect of the business of asset management, but a new survey from Cutter Associates shows that asset managers are slow to act and haven 't fully embraced data capture and marketing automation. The survey results point to an ...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: Los Angeles-based buyout firm Leonard Green Partners (LPG) has raised $14.75 billion for two new funds, including a middle-market focused fund. The private-equity firm collected the total in roughly seven months, including $12 billion for its latest flagship buyout fun...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: The US-based mid-market private equity firm Parthenon Capital closed its growth-oriented private equity fund Parthenon Investors VI at its hard cap of $2 billion. The closing exceeds its fundraising target of $1.5 billion, said a press note. Investors include the $30 b...

Opalesque Industry Update - The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index gained 0.84% in November, supported by the strong performance of the global equity market as represented by the 2.76% gain recorded by the MSCI ACWI (Local). Market optimism towards the progress of the US-China trade talks, combined wit...

From FT: Some investors are betting that rumours of the death of the global macro fund have been greatly exaggerated. US asset manager Neuberger Berman on Monday announced the launch of a "macro opportunities" fund, focused purely on major currencies. Specialist currency manager ...

UBS plans long-short fund with ESG strategy From Institutional Investor: UBS Group's multistrategy hedge fund business is planning to launch a long-short fund to make bets tied to environmental, social and governance criteria, according to the unit's chief investment officer. Kevin Russell, CIO...

Citadel surges past multistrat peers From Institutional Investor: Citadel's main multistrategy fund is poised to post its best results in at least five or six years, depending on how it fares in the final month of the year.The hedge fund firm's Wellington fund gained 1.3 percent in November and i...

Texas Teachers assigns more than $500m to alts From PIonline.com: The $154.6 billion Texas Teacher Retirement System, Austin, committed $525 million to three private equity/venture capital managers in November, a monthly transaction report showed. Members of the plan's private equity team awarde...

Pershing Square reports stake in Agilent Technologies From WSJ: Bill Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management on Monday disclosed a 2.9 million-share stake in laboratory instrument and software company Agilent Technologies Inc. The stake was disclosed in an amendment to Pershing Sq...

GAM fixed income and FX trading head to exit From Financial News: GAM, the Swiss asset manager reportedly considering hundreds of job cuts under its recently appointed chief executive, is about to lose another high profile employee from its ranks. Christopher Jarman, head of fixed income and FX ...

Saga, a blockchain firm advised by Nobel laureate Myron Scholes just launched a rival to Facebook's libra From CNBC: One blockchain company thinks it has an alternative to Facebook's digital currency proposal. With an advisory board that includes top economists like Nobel Prize-winner Myron Schol...

UBS hedge fund CIO sees 'peak anxiety' before U.S. elections From Bloomberg: U.S. equity markets should prepare for more turbulence as the 2020 presidential election draws near, according to Kevin Russell, chief investment officer of UBS O'Connor, the $5.1 billion hedge fund unit at UBS Group AG....

Now repo distortions emerge in Europe's $9tn market The European repo market may have escaped the kind of turmoil that engulfed the U.S. financial system this year, but that doesn't mean all is calm. The 8 trillion-euro ($9 trillion) market is becoming increasingly fragmented, according to the B...

The truth about private equity fund size From Institutional Investor: As the end of the year approaches, institutional investors in private markets are wrapping up work on the last few funds we need to invest in to hit our targeted annual commitment levels. You see, private equity is sort of li...

CDC, Laerernes commit to Amundi, EIB green bond program From PIonline.com: French and Danish asset owners have invested in Green Credit Continuum program, which has raised euro;253 million ($278.4 million) as of Nov. 30 to support green debt issuance in Europe, the European Investment Bank said ...

From Reuters: The ailing former Bayou hedge fund manager Samuel Israel has lost his bid for an early end to his 22-year prison sentence for running a $450 million fraud, as a U.S. judge found it would make a "mockery" of federal sentencing laws to set him free. Chief Judge Colleen...

S.Africa: Are we missing out on hedge fund diversification? From Business Live: Local hedge funds have slowly been cleaning up their act to be more appealing to ordinary investors. But they still have a way to go before financial advisers and investment platforms make them readily accessible. Hed...

From BizarreNews: A New York state college professor set his second Guinness World Record when he bent seven steel railroad spikes in one minute. William Clark, a professor in the Binghamton University health and wellness department and a former Olympic strongman, bent seven steel spikes at the coll...

Jim Gorman doesn’t need to let anyone go this holiday season. Morgan Stanley’s still No. 1 in trading. It bested estimates in the third quarter. Shares are up 25% this year. In spite of all that, Gorman feels uneasy. Brexit, Trump, macroeconomic concerns, a general malaise, a certain sense of ...

Reuters UK

Bloomberg

Bloomberg

CNBC

Agilent Technologies gain after-hours trading after hedge fund investor Bill Ackman revealed he has taken a stake in the company.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg

For months, even as California firestarter PG&E did all it could to keep itself out of his hands, Paul Singer seemed to have the upper hand. However Gov. Gavin Newsom felt about the hedge fund manager, Elliott Management and its fellow PG&E bondholders had kept the utility’s victims The post appeared first on dealbreaker..

The search for unfairly undervalued energy investments is peppered with difficulties

Pimco, CQS, Hayfin all have plans to launch funds investing in crumbling companies

Law360

Business Insider

After a lifetime working his way up the rungs at HSBC, John Flint managed to muck things up so royally that he was escorted out after just 18 months in the top job. Still, five months later the stench in the boardroom is so great that a number of other longtime veterans infected by it now have to ...

Neuberger Berman has launched the Neuberger Berman Macro Opportunities FX Fund, which aims to deliver positive returns of 5-6 per cent in excess of cash per annum before fees, primarily by exploring relative value across G10 currencies.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker is dead at the age of 92. But given the thankless, miserable world in which he ended his life, he might as well have died at 82. For however nice the book deal, score-settling and encomium from Ray Dalio have been, Volcker was unfortunate to live just ...

Risk concentration in investor portfolios has been building in a prevailing ‘risk-on’ environment, leading to substantial growth in global equity markets over the past decade. There are numerous reasons for this, led principally by the decisive action of central bankers to print money through quantitative easing. This has led to an artificial suppression of market volatility causing equities to boom and fixed income yields to head into unparalleled negative territory.

Financial News

iNVEZZ

Geneva-based group Notz Stucki has acquired the Geneva-based alternative management company JAM Research, a provider of hedge fund investment services to wealthy private clients.

Breakingviews

citywireselector.com

The Senior Managers & Certification Regime that comes into effect today (9 December) is a positive step for the financial services industry – but its failure to include Appointed Representative Firms (ARFs) and their individuals is an oversight, according to Sturgeon Ventures, a regulatory incubator.

The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (BNY Mellon) and SimCorp have partnered to connect BNY Mellon’s range of custody capabilities – including settlement, safekeeping, and cash and securities services – with SimCorp’s integrated front-to-back investment management system, SimCorp Dimension.

Mediolanum Banking Group has officially opened it new European Asset Management Headquarters in Dublin. The Irish operations of Banca Mediolanum comprise Mediolanum International Funds Limited (MIFL) and Mediolanum International Life Dac.

Heading into year-end, hedge funds extended their run of positive performance in November with broad-based gains across all strategies, led by the high-beta exposure sub-strategies, Healthcare, Technology, and Fundamental Value.

First Eagle Investment Management (First Eagle) is to acquire THL Credit Advisors, an alternative credit manager with approximately USD17 billion in assets under management as of 30 September, 2019.

Industry experts fear the suspension of the M&G Property Portfolio could lead to a swathe of gatings in the space, despite reassurances from asset managers that their funds have enough of a cash buffer to meet investor redemptions.

By Nicolas Rabener of FactorResearch (@FactorResearch) Beta is like ice cream and comes in many flavors. Broadly we can categorize it into the following four types: Plain beta: Market capitalization-weighted benchmark indices like the S&P 500 or FTSE 100. Smart beta: Indices with tilts to factors backed by academic andRead More

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: Las Vegas-based asset management and advisory firm Five Star Funds has announced the formation of the Flamingo All Weather Fund, LP, the first hedge fund of its kind to be based in the City of Las Vegas. The area has enjoyed sustained periods of significant economic grow...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index gained +1.2 percent in November, as optimism regarding U.S. economic growth outweighed risks and negative sentiment around trade/tariff negotiations and impeachment proceedings, according to HFR. Heading into year-end, hedge funds ex...

A report in the week ending December 6th 2019, said that with gains in November, Bill Ackman 's hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management is on track to land massive returns. It posted a 3.4% gross gain for November, or 3.2% after fees. The month 's performance brought its year-to-date return t...

Hedge funds key in exacerbating repo market turmoil, says BIS From FT: Hedge funds exacerbated the recent turmoil in the repo market with their thirst for borrowing cash to juice up returns on their trades, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Investors, bankers and policymakers ...

Magnetar seeks $400m for its first health-care hedge fund From Bloomberg: Magnetar Capital, the alternative investment firm started by Alec Litowitz and Ross Laser, is set to launch its first health-care hedge fund next year, seizing on a strong sector for startups. The firm is seeking about $...

CPPIB earmarks $600m for India infrastructure From PIonline.com: Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Toronto, announced commitments and co-investments totaling $600 million with the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund of India, in a news release Thursday. The C$409.5 billion ($307.8 ...

Why some hedge funds are warming towards Europe From FT: Investors expecting "more of the same" from equity markets could be in for a shock next year. For much of the past decade there has been little reason to question the orthodoxy of buying and holding stocks, preferably in t...

Former US Ranger ready to take command at Bridgewater From FT: A decade ago Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio set out to convince David McCormick, a former US Treasury official, to join his $160bn hedge fund. Over dinner, Mr Dalio told him that there were "very high odds" of him suc...

Korea's top court acknowledges economic value of cryptocurrencies From Business Korea: The Supreme Court of South Korea acknowledged the economic value of cryptocurrencies for the first time in May last year. At that time, the court ruled that the Bitcoin is an intangible asset, implying that cry...

From FT: Latin America's asset management industry is set to double by 2025, driven by the growing wealth and size of the region's middle class, as well as a big increase in pools of pension savings. Assets held in mutual funds, institutional mandates and alternatives across Latin America are for...

China's privately offered funds expand in November From Xinhua: China's privately offered funds managed 13.74 trillion yuan (about 1.95 trillion U.S. dollars) at the end of November, industry association data showed. The figure was up 49.27 billion yuan, or 0.36 percent from a month earlier, acco...

Drop in European private equity exits via IPOs as tough conditions bite From City AM: The number of European private equity exits executed via listings is declining as sponsors seek alternative routes amid challenging market conditions, new figures show. Of the European private equity exits that ha...

AQR: Active fixed-income strategies don't deliver much 'true alpha' From Institutional Investor: Active fixed income strategies tend to beat their benchmarks - but much of that excess return just comes from passive exposures to traditional risk premia, according to researchers at AQR Capital Mana...

Negative yields, shrinking unicorns and more challenges for 2020 From Yahoo: Risk took on some surprising shapes in 2019. People stood up to governments. Negative yields rattled the bond market. Passive funds overtook the stockpickers. Leverage peaked, unicorns deflated, and illiquidity destroyed...

Wealthy and young investors are driving shift towards ESG From Investment Europe: The idea of applying ESG criteria to the investment process is increasingly gaining momentum among HNW investors, according to Cerulli Associates. In its latest report, the Boston-based research firm reveals that th...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: Probable sexual harassment at fund portfolio management firms is an increasingly important concern for institutional investors as they seek to allocate assets. But, according to a survey, most investors are not asking money managers about their record on sexual harassmen...

From Bloomberg: Argentina tried a novel defense as a fourth hedge fund tried to sue it: asking the investors to wait until the country's new president is sworn in. The London suit began with three funds -- Palladian Partners LP, HBK Master Fund LP and Hirsh Group LLC that allege the country manip...

Bank for International Settlements point to firms’ thirst for borrowed cash to fire up returns

Hedge funds key in exacerbating repo market turmoil, says BIS  Financial Times

Bloomberg

This is Money

The Island Now

We aren't sure whether value stocks outperform growth, but we follow hedge fund investor letters to understand where the markets and stocks might be going. That's why we believe it would be worthwhile ...

MarketWatch

The Wall Street Journal

Is OneMain Holdings Inc (NYSE:OMF) undervalued? The smart money is in a bearish mood. The number of long hedge fund positions shrunk by 1 in recent months. Our calculations also showed that OMF isn't ...

Barron's

Reuters

Reuters India

Institutional Investor

CBS News

We don’t get out of bed for a Deutsche Bank fine of less than $100 million, because really who has the time, and also because anything less is very literally only a drop in the bucket of the $20 billion-plus the other DB has had to part ways with for being naughty over the last few years. There ...

As we’ve established, most trading in bitcoin—like everything else about it—is fake. But even if now really is finally the time to buy, or pretend to buy, on account of its most recent plunge, there’s apparently no sport in trying to manipulate the imaginary anymore. In the last week of November, ...

FIN News

David McCormick’s rise through the ranks at hedge fund is striking

David Solomon has been CEO of Goldman Sachs for a little over a year. It has not been a good year. (It wasn’t even a good first month.) From the Malaysian bribery scandal to the credit card debacle to the beating estimates only by cutting pay to the money-losing to the latest insider-trading ...

STLtoday.com

Business Insider

What are millennials killing now? Says here, it’s… the NBA? Really? Mark Cuban wasn’t entirely faulting the scapegoat generation for this season’s decline in pro basketball’s television ratings, but the Mavericks’ owner went down that road in an interview with the Dallas Morning News. “Kids, I ...

Crain's Chicago Business

Insider trading certainly seems illegal. People continue to be indicted for it. Congressmen continue to plead guilty to it. Other people remain in jail convicted of it, or, having left jail, just convicted of it. Still others continue to be sued by the SEC for it. So, yea, in spite of the hopes ...

If you were about to drop north of $2 billion on one of the most high-profile businesses around, you’d probably want to spend some time on it. Focus your attention there. Work hard to make it better than it is, especially if that business were the New York Mets and obviously in need of all the help ...

Nasdaq

Bloomberg Law

During the rise of renewables, solar energy in the UK has – unsurprisingly for such a cloudy country – often taken a backseat to wind power generation.

Chief Investment Officer

Business Insider

Bloomberg

Springfield Business Journal

Hedge fund billionaire Steven A. Cohen is reportedly working on a deal that, if approved, would make him the new owner of the New York Mets. A decades-long Mets fan, Cohen would bring his estimated ...

The global economy is slowing down at an increasing speed. The International Monetary Fund projects real economic growth in advanced economies to slow down from 2.2% in 2018 to 1.9% in 2019 and 1.7% in 2020.

Risk.net

Hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen, CEO of Point72 Asset Management, is in talks to boost his ownership in the New York Mets baseball team to a majority stake, perhaps bringing more of a Wall Street ...

TIL HR DO US PART BlackRock fired a potential heir to Larry Fink’s throne whose wife is also an employee at the company. Why did he get the boot? For not disclosing a consensual relationship with a colleague. Confused? Plot twist: the relationship wasn’t with his wife. This is some 'Mad Men' ...

Eventus Systems, a global trade surveillance and market risk platform provider, has selected Itiviti’s Managed FIX Service to consolidate drop copies from market centres.

Ambitious new proposals for one of Edinburgh’s largest development projects for more than a decade have been unveiled.

Liberty Global plc (NASDAQ:LBTYA) shares haven't seen a lot of action during the third quarter. Overall, hedge fund sentiment was unchanged. The stock was in 27 hedge funds' portfolios at the end of ...

HedgeWeek

Following two challenging months, all SG CTA indices were back in positive territory in November with the SG CTA Index closing the month at +0.87 per cent as 14 out of 20 constituents were positive and cemented their gains YTD, up at +6.93 per cent.

The Guardian

Bloomberg

Celebrity Net Worth

Amundi-CREATE Research has offered its independent assessment on challenges now faced by the world’s pension funds, given the policies of central banks. The subject is of great significance to alternative investments managers who represent the aggressive end of many a pension fund’s portfolio. The gist of the report is thatRead More

Elon Musk is a billionaire entrepreneur, and as such is not used to be called to account for his actions, whether those actions are alleged securities law violations or smoking weed on camera while under scrutiny for a Twitter habit at the heart of those alleged securities law violations or ...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: Alternative investment firm Apollo Global Management plans to build out a private equity business in Japan, where it sees opportunities in alternatives market. The global alternative investment manager announced the appointment of Tetsuji Okamoto as a Partner, Head of Ja...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: Global asset management 2020 outlook remains stable amid structural headwinds, which constrain EBITDA growth. "The 2020 outlook for the global asset management sector is stable, reflecting high-profit margins, manageable debt burdens, and sustained risk appetite...

Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia: A vast majority of senior executives in fund management industry have an average to poor understanding of blockchain technology, said a survey. Despite overall optimism in blockchain's potential, 76 percent of industry respondents described the level of understanding of b...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing Laurence G. Allen and the various corporate entities he controls for defrauding investors and misappropriating more than $13 million to enrich himself and his companies between 2008 and 2018. The complaint - filed in...

From Axios: Bad news has continued for the hedge fund industry this year. Overall hedge fund returns have continued to trail both the S P 500 and a mix of 50% global stocks and 50% global bonds by a wide margin. What's happening: There are too many hedge funds, and too many of them are using simple...

Alternative data blew up thanks to desperate hedge funds looking to get an edge From Business Insider: The constantly changing alternative data space is set for more growth in 2020, according to one data platform, but the datasets, structure, and clients will be different. After primarily selling t...

From Institutional Investor: Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital is on the way to having its best year ever. Last month, its publicly traded fund, Pershing Square Holdings, gained 3.2 percent, putting its year-to-date gain above 50 percent - 51.3 percent, to be exact, according to a report to inv...

Revelstoke raises $1.4bbn for sophomore fund, single asset secondary Revelstoke Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on investing in healthcare services companies, announced today that it has completed fundraising for Revelstoke Capital Partners Fund II, L.P. (RCP Fund II) and Revelstoke...

Minnesota State Board assigns nearly $1bn to 7 alts managers From PIonline.com: Minnesota State Board of Investments, St. Paul, approved the recommendation of its investment committee to commit a total of $950 million to seven alternative investment funds during a Dec. 2 board meeting, said Mansco ...

Elon Musk buys out the neighbors From WSJ: Elon Musk, the high-profile billionaire who has placed bold bets on driverless cars and space flights, is known for his over-the-top antics: He appeared in a Los Angeles court earlier this week, telling a jury that a Twitter message he sent suggesting a Th...

BlackRock's Mark Wiseman terminated for failing to disclose employee relationship From WSJ: A contender for the top job at BlackRock Inc. was ousted from the money-management giant for failing to disclose a relationship with an employee under his reporting line, the latest high-profile instance of ...

Ethereum gets another big development boost from Ernst Young From News BTC: Accounting giant Ernst Young has just released open source code that vastly improves privacy and transaction efficiency for Ethereum. The news comes just days before the network undergoes an upgrade that further reduces...

Fed injections are no lasting solution for 'broken' repo market - experts From Financial News: The Federal Reserve's ongoing efforts to shore up the short-term "repo" lending markets have begun to rattle some market experts. The New York Federal Reserve has spent hundreds of bill...

Investors recover equity appetite following record UK outflows From City Wire: Equity fund inflows returned over October following record Q3 outflows as savers invested pound;648 million into the funds over the month. Figures from the fund management trade body the Investment Association show that...

For Australia's pension funds, it really does pay to be good From Yahoo: Responsible investing pays real dividends. That's the verdict of a survey released Friday by the Responsible Investment Association Australasia, which analyzed the returns of almost 60 of Australia's largest superannuation, or...

Private equity: The bottom line benefits from gender diversity From FT: When the private equity executive Lise Fauconnier led Ardian's investment in logistics specialist Staci in October, acquiring a majority stake, it was not just another feather in the cap for an experienced investor with an impr...

Climate change has made ESG a force in investing From Economist: "Labelling based on incomplete information, public shaming, and shunning wrapped in moral rhetoric," said Hester Peirce, a straight-talking commissioner at America's main financial regulator, the Securities and Excha...

From FA Mag: A Chicago-area hedge fund advisor who launched a hedge fund in his dorm room has been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of committing a multiyear fraud that involved the inflation of his fund's values, cheating investors out of $1.4 million in fees. The agency's complai...

Investor to oppose Instructure's plans to sell to Thoma Bravo From Reuters: Rivulet Capital, a large investor in Instructure Inc, on Thursday said it will resist the U.S. educational software company's plan to sell itself to private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $2 billion, calling the deal too cheap...

Decrypt

CNBC

It is not easy for observers to see when investments turn sour

Dec.05 -- Mohammad Hassan, head analyst for hedge fund research and indexation at Eurekahedge Pte Ltd., discusses China’s hedge fund market and the challenges foreign firms are facing doing business ...

Bloomberg reported that Cohen is in talks to acquire up to 80% of the team, which would be valued at $2.6 billion. Cohen, an investor and hedge fund manager worth an estimated $13 billion, bought a 4% ...

No matter how much cajoling and foot-stomping and humiliating and IPO cancelling Mohammed bin Salman has done or was going to do, no one was going to pay for Saudi Aramco shares at a $2 trillion valuation, possibly because of the Jamal Khashoggi discount, but also possibly because Saudi Aramco may ...

Financial Advisor Magazine

The billionaire hedge fund manager Steve Cohen is in talks to buy up to 80% of the New York Mets. Greg Zuckerman, hedge funds and private equity reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and Wally Walker, ...

The 2020 outlook for the global asset management sector is stable, reflecting high profit margins, manageable debt burdens, and sustained risk appetite among investors, Moody’s Investors Service says in its annual outlook.