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In the week-ending February 10, 2012, it was reported that former TCI and Citadel duo Masroor Siddiqui and Bruce Emery had teamed up to launch their own global long/short equity fund on May 1; Reyl Asset Management launched two new UCITS IV compliant long/short funds; Merchant House said it has a new UCITS fund in advanced stage of approval with the Central Bank of Ireland after launching the Merchant Astor Long/Short UCITS Fund last month; and Marshall Wace GaveKal launched the MW GaveKal China Fixed Income Strategy UCITS fund that will invest in debt instruments denominated in RMB, HKD or SGD.
Korea’s Truston Asset Management is set to launch a pan-Asia long/short equity fund; former Goldman Sachs trader Taimur Hassan is planning to start a commodities hedge fund this year; HSBC announced the launch of High Net Worth & Institutional share classes for its HSBC Next Generation Fund; Queenscliff Partners started the initial phase for the launch of its flagship hedge fund offerings; Ranodeb Roy is raising $1bn to start a new hedge fund firm, RV Capital Management; Steve Alperin and Sara Fleiss have rolled out an event-driven volatility arbitrage offering focused on emerging markets called Emeth Partners; hedge fund pioneer William Bollinger came out of retirement and announced plans to launch a new fund in Singapore; and Open Door Capital Group is to launch its first hedge fund, the China Absolute Return Fund, next month.
January 2012 offered a positive start for hedge funds with the Barclay Hedge Fund Index up +2.93%, and the Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index up +2.05% during the month; the Lyxor Hedge Fund Index recorded a positive performance of +1.30%; the HFRX Absolute Return Index was up +0.56%; the Dow Jones Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index jumped up +2.34%; the RBC Hedge 250 Index gained +1.66%; the Barclay CTA Index gained 0.05%; the Newedge CTA Index was up +0.75%; and the Lyster Watson Credit Fixed Income Index was up +1.89%.
AM Capital Management said it hoped to continue its decent performance this year after gaining +21.19% in January through taking advantage of deeply discounted prices; Cheyne Capital gained 2.4% in January after Europe's Central Bank announced cheap finance for banks; Investcorp reported a 90% drop in half-year profits last week caused by declining hedge fund revenues; boutique hedge fund Aros Paradigm Fund returned positive 14.54%, reversing its -22.20% loss in 2011; Polygon Investment Partners posted a 2.69% gain for its convertible arbitrage fund in January and reported that its European equities fund was up 0.89% during the same month.
All three Scipion African Opportunities funds were positive in January; Simon Finch’s CQS European Distressed fund found opportunity in structural change in the European debt markets; Pardo Capital’s XT99 CTA was up +23.6% for 2011, and announced the opening of new programs to investors; Wellington Management lost money buying toxic assets and fell 4.7% since October 2009; and Tyrus Capital started the year on a strong start as his flagship fund jumped 3.74%.
A study by Preqin showed that the average assets for mid-sized fund of hedge funds jumped up an average 10% in 2011 as larger managers saw their AuM fall; GLG Partners is to “soft close” its GLG Japan CoreAlpha and its GLG Japan CoreAlpha Equity funds to new investors from 30 March, to protect performance; net outflows from UCITS funds slowed down in December to EUR 6bn, from EUR 9bn recorded in November, EFAMA said; and according to Hedge Fund Research, small hedge funds attracted more money last month as their bigger rivals stumbled.
Cantor Fitzgerald is planning to seed with a seeding fund that would provide between $25m and $50m start-up capital to 20 to 25 emerging hedge fund managers.
Other miscellaneous hedge fund news reports said that the latest BlackRock Investment Institute report showed that Exchange Traded Products set a new monthly record, attracting $9.1bn in net new assets in January; Ogier continued its expansion this year with the opening of its first office in Luxembourg; a new case study from Markov Processes International revealed how their predictive analytic techniques could be used to reproduce beta exposures of hedge funds; in an exclusive interview, Stephen Brown told Opalesque that operational due diligence could be a source of alpha; CI Financial Corp., bought a “significant minority interest” in fledgling hedge fund firm Lawrence Park Capital Partners.
Macquarie Group is to provide third party hedge fund capital raising services to external hedge funds; the latest of Lyxor research said that a normalizing trading environment would support hedge fund returns in 2012; investors are again showing confidence in global equities, said the latest BofA Merrill Lynch Fund Manager Survey; and reports by BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank showed that investors were more interested in strategies uncorrelated to equity markets.
Hedge funds published their Q4 positions in regulatory filings which showed that Eric Mindich raised his stakes in Bank of America but John Paulson sold off the 64.3 million shares he held in the bank, for example. Among other investments made by hedge funds, it was reported that R-Squared Master Fund had been buying Japan's credit default swaps since the end of 2011; Cargill has injected almost $40m into an Australian company which buys Australian rural property; Harbinger Capital Partners’ Phil Falcone may be selling his stakes in Ferrous Resources Ltd
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