From the Opalesque team: Ed Rogers, principal of Tokyo-based Rogers Investment Advisors, stated in his end-of-year commentary that that period had been a very challenging time for investors, quoting macro events such as the threatened default of Dubai, and that BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) had been replaced with concern over PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Greece, Spain) whi...

Triple A Partners and Hatfield Advisors announced today that they have entered into a joint venture agreement to develop their combined Fund distributions business on a global basis. With immediate effect Hatfield Advisors will change its name to Triple A Partners Australia. The staff of Hatfield Advisors, led by Managing Director Damien Hatfield, will all remain with the business. Th...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: A newly published survey by global risk and performance firm MSCI Barra indicated that for the first time, institutional investors are taking serious steps to increase the oversight of in-house risk management teams. Commitment to this area (which includes budgeting for the hiring of more ...

This article was written by Nadia Menezes, Senior Associate at law firm Ogier. The market turbulence over the last twelve months has seen fund structures and mechanics being strenuously tested under extreme conditions. Whilst there were a number of fatalities, many more funds have been able to survive than mar...

Pressured private equity, real estate firms trim management fees From PIonline.com: Private equity and real estate fund investors don't want their managers making money from fees meant to keep the lights on, and some managers are starting to react by cutting fees on existing and future funds. Among others, TPG recently refunded $20 million in fees on...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: Whereas convertible arbitrage, a market neutral investment strategy involving the simultaneous long position in a convertible securities and the short position in the underlying stock, was among the worst performers in the hedge fund arena last year, it has experienced resurgence this year. What happened to this normally consistently low risk stra...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: This week Morningstar reported their survey of institutional investors showed very favorable expectations for the future performance of alternative investments. According to the survey, the future for hedge fund allocations is particularly bright: - More than 60% of institutio...

From the Opalesque team: Institutional investor the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) will maintain a global focus for investments in order to capture opportunities in future years, said Portfolio Manager Aleksander Weiler during the latest Opalesque Roundtable (Toronto). ...

From Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: Heiko van Wyngaarden, head of South African hedge fund house Oryx Investment Management, told investors of his renewed conviction about pan-Africa in a recent communication received by Opalesque. Until a few months ago, the man...

By Christine Gaylican, Opalesque Asia: GFIA, a Singapore-based independent research and advisory firm, has raised some important points as it questioned the relevance of Sharpe ratios in evaluating the performance of hedge funds and other alternative investments. In its latest white paper, “The Myth of Persistent Sharpe Ratio,” GFIA scrutinized disappointing results of he...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: The combination of impressive performance numbers during 2009 and returning investors has allowed the hedge fund industry to slow the hemorrhaging of assets. According to analysis from the team at Credit Suisse Tremont Hedge Index (CST Hedge Index), including performance gains, total indus...

From Christine Gaylican, Opalesque Asia: China now has more dollar billionaires, total of 130 The number of Chinese billionaires went up by 28.7% to 130 this year in spite the global downturn, according to the annual Hurun Report published today (Source). The Asian cou...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Lighthouse Investment Partners will announce today that the firm has grown its managed accounts program to include 80 distinct investments and span over $2bln in assets. For President and Co-Chief Investment Officer Sea...

From Hedgeworld.com: (Excerpted from comments Nicole Rothschild, Rothschild Family Office and Petra Partners LLC, made speaking at the 8th Annual Family Office Symposium in Florida, which was held by Financial Research Associates on September 24-25.) A significant percentage of accumulated family wealth was lost in 2008. Full recovery from this recessionary environment, both domestica...

HedgeMark, a firm designed to address the need for a truly independent, open-architecture SMA platform for investors in alternative assets. The HedgeMark platform differentiates itself by providing an integrated suite of sophisticated portfolio construction, fund research, risk analyses and portfolio monitoring modules. Investors will have the ability to build, model, and test hypothetical portfol...

From Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Paris and London-based alternative fund management firm Olympia Capital Management released a research paper last week called “Managed Accounts and Tracking Error Risk which said that although managed accounts were clearly an attractive solution to providing better liqu...

Last summer, Global Custodian published its annual survey of the prime brokerage industry which provides interesting insight on the impact of the crisis on their business and the perspective of the industry going forward, says Gabriel Kurland from Geneva-based firm Hedge Fund Appraisal in his current newsletter. Global Custod...

By Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: Fund manager Rose & Sky Investments (Cayman) Ltd., which also has an investment adviser office in Switzerland (Rose & Sky Investments AG), launched a new fund on 31st August-09. The Rose & Sky Europe...

By Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: This is the third article of a four-part series. See Part One here and Part Two here. The competition between managed accounts an...

Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index confirms July performance up 2.54%, 9.90% YTD Final performance for the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index is confirmed up 2.54% in July, according to Oliver Schupp, President of Credit Suisse Index Co., Inc. Mr. Schupp said, "The last time hedge funds posted stronger year-to-date performance through July wa...

By Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: This is the first article of a three-part series. Investors are now seeking greater services and transparency from FoHFs. That means that larger FoHFs with the right infrastructure and technology, argues Gottex, will likely benefit from this industry trend. However, it is said that managed accounts might just be a knee-jerk reactio...

From Matthias Knab, Opalesque Europe: London-based Montello Private Finance says the firm has developed a model to take advantage of the illiquidity in the banking sector and providing superior risk-adjusted returns in the niche bridging finance market. The Montello model allows investors looking to manage their funds more actively, significant control and transparency. Furthermore, Montello'...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: The fee structure of hedge funds has long been a topic for debate and a new study by research firm Prequin confirmed that investors are doing all they can to apply downward pressure on the traditional “2% and 20%” structure. A spring 2009 survey by the firm reflected th...

From Mondaq.com: In June 2009, we reported that the U.S. Department of the Treasury has implemented a Voluntary Disclosure Program (VDP) for taxpayers with offshore assets. We noted that any U.S. person with a financial interest in, or signatory authority over, any financial account in a foreign country (e.g., foreign trusts, corporations, banks, mutual funds, hedge funds, life insurance policies,...

By Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: Some of the commodities hedge funds that we came across showed varied returns so far this year, depending on their focus and on their handling of the diverging performances among the commodity sub-sectors. Bloomberg.com reported yesterday that accordin...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Opalesque readers who follow our weekly review of hedge fund launches, closures, trends, etc may have noted the list of launching funds has been maintaining a steady pace of late. “Many of the great firms of 2012 are being created this year,” Chris Acito...

The following is an edited transcript of a presentation Thomas Walek, President of a New York-based public relations agency Walek & Associates, gave recently in Hong Kong to a group of hedge fund managers and investor relations executives: Our topic is "Hedge Fund Investor Relations: New Demands, New Strategies." The following are some observations that guide...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: As public awareness of climate change issues is growing and market-based solutions are increasingly seen as the key to delivering pragmatic change, the trading business is booming. The London-based European Climate Exchange (ECX) is seeing increased interest in emissions trading from the investment management and hedge ...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: According to research by Cerulli, the managed account industry has declined 28.8% since the 2007 start to the financial crisis. However, in the long run, the financial crisis may be a boon to this area as revelations of fraud and the poor behavior on the part of some managers (ie, gating ass...

FRM`s Patric de Gentile-Williams comments on the current state of hedge fund seeding From TheHedgeFundJournal.com: Comment from Patric de Gentile-Williams, COO at FRM Capital Advisors (FCA): - The environment for hedge fund seeders has changed dramatically over the last 12 months - There are now fewer seeders in the market - Even es...

AIG selling New York City buildings The embattled insurer American International Group Inc. is selling its headquarters building in New York and a nearby building in a deal expected to close at the end of this summer, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday. But the person said that AIG is not disclosing the price or who the buyer is. The person asked for an...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: The world is rapidly growing smaller and yet infinitely more complex. And as this happens, global macro managers are conquering the markets analyzing the big picture and using their knowledge of global events (past and present) as a crystal ball, becoming the only hedge fund strategy in the ...

By Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: Seed capital, the initial capital used to start a business, is sometimes provided by seeding businesses to the hedge fund industry. According to a White Paper issued in October 2008 by Infovest21...

By Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: The European Commission (EC)'s proposed Directive to regulate alternative investment managers, issued last week, generated many reactions and concerns, both positive and negative - but mostly negative. A London-based regulatory consultant argues for the positive aspects, and puts forward some of the changes that need to be done to the Dire...

A US-based Opalesque reader sent us a report published last week in French daily Les Echos: Swiss banks have been under pressure from attacks against bank secrecy for two months. The offensive launched by the IRS has snowballed and now the French and German governments would also like to find out the names of their citizens holding Swiss bank accounts. It's "all hands on de...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque London: Cedric Chone, the Geneva-based lead portfolio manager of the Galena Special Situations Fund, gives his outlook for the metals and energy sectors: Case for investing in Metals There are two key themes today and in coming months that support the case for metal investing: restocking and inflation. ...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: After a slow start, news of launches to take advantage of Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF) have begun to pick up slightly. "Spreads are coming in, and deals are getting done, so TALF is actually having its intended effect, regardless of the volume of deals done thus f...