According to a press release received by Opalesque, Insch Capital Management AG has opened new offices in the canton of Zug, Switzerland, and also relocated the domicile of the firm to Zug. Insch is a privately owned currency management specialist with a client base that includes banks and other financial institutions. Over the last several years, Insch has experienced substantial growt...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Neal Berger, President of New York-based Eagle's View Capital Partners L.P. has a unique view of alternatives investing. Rather than focusing on macro trends and typical asset classes, Eagle's View seeks out emerging investment opportunities such as electricity trading to drive returns. So far, it’s a strategy that seems to be working - the fu...

From Marketwatch.com: Apollo Global Management, LLC and its subsidiaries announced that it has agreed to merge Stone Tower Capital LLC and its related management companies, a leading alternative credit manager with approximately $17 billion of assets under management, into Apollo's capital markets business. The transaction will substantially increase Apollo's capital markets AUM to appro...

D.E. Shaw said to be in talks to buy stake in China’s TEDA From Bloomberg/Businessweek.com D.E. Shaw & Co., the $21 billion hedge-fund firm, is in advanced talks to buy a stake in Chinese state-controlled investment company Tianjin TEDA International Holding (Group) Co., said three people familiar with the matter. D.E. Shaw, based in New York, is in ne...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York Last Thursday at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, members of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association (CAIA) association met to honor Dr. Mark Anson for his leadership in the field of alternative investments. The CAIA Leadership Award is the most prestigious award given for leadership in the alternative investments industry....

From Precy Dumlao, Opalesque Asia The current market volatility makes it a very challenging environment to raise capital for the whole hedge fund industry, particularly for the fund of hedge funds (FoHFs) space. This makes transparency and independent oversight very important. That was the consensus reached by various panelists in the latest ...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Hedge funds are back to their 2007 peak in terms of assets, at around $2tln – but it’s not the case for funds of hedge funds (FoHFs). Especially when it comes to European FoHFs, which used to use much more leverage than their U.S. counterparts. The current crisis is similar to the ’08 credit crisis, said Alexandre Col at ...

Only 20% of hedge fund investors plan to focus solely on maintaining existing relationships with managers over the next 12 months. Hedge fund managers will be able to access new capital sources over the next 12 months as 80% of investors are at least considering investing with new managers, the latest Preqin research reveals. Furthermore, 38% of investors are planning to increase the a...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Three competing investment banks have reportedly said that "dozens" of Jefferies hedge fund clients were trying to find other places to park client money and execute trades. Indeed, fears of contagion from both bankrupt broker-dealer MF Global � to which the investment bank Jefferies has a $9m exposure � and the European sovere...

Opalesque Ltd., a leading provider of online information services to the alternative investment industry, today announced the official launch of the Opalesque Solutions Emanagers Database and Index series. The Opalesque Emanagers Total Index is based on currently 293 emerging hedge fund and managed futures fund managers listed in the Emanagers database, the industry's only database dedica...

From Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Emerging managers face headwind in the current climate and also have to meet new regulatory demands. To survive, they need to raise enough assets to support the necessary infrastructure. Fortunately for them, this coincides with a current growth in the fund seeding business, according to the participants of recent Opalesque Connecticut Roundtable. ...

Landmark Advisors, the New York-based investment firm, announces that it has closed its acquisition of the Tuckerbrook Real Assets Fund, a multimanager private equity vehicle dedicated to upstream and midstream energy, independent power, mining and minerals, infrastructure, timber and agriculture investments. The Fund will be renamed Landmark Real Assets Fund I. In conjunction with the...

By Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London: A report from specialist research firm Preqin, entitled 'Institutional Investors on the Hunt for Hedge Funds’finds that there could be up to $195bn earmarked for new hedge fund investments in the next 12 months. The report claims that the time is ripe for hedge fund managers to market to the growing institutional sector of the investor commu...

From Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: The month of August was the most disastrous for many hedge fund managers as the equity markets were hit hard by the worsening European debt issue and the U.S. sovereign downgrade. Even the most veteran and most experienced fund managers including Steven Cohen, Dan Loeb, David Einhorn and John Paulson were hit by double-digit declines during last month’...

From Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: The month of August was the most disastrous for many hedge fund managers as the equity markets were hit hard by the worsening European debt issue and the U.S. sovereign downgrade. Even the most veteran and most experienced fund managers including Steven Cohen, Dan Loeb, David Einhorn and John Paulson were hit by double-digit declines during last month’...

From Alphametrix.com: A hedge fund designed to profit from a slowdown in the Chinese economy, run by the London hedge fund manager Hugh Hendry, has soared in value over the past two months as global markets have plummeted and industry peers have suffered damaging losses. Mr Hendry - a former Odey Asset Management trader - is one of only a handful of hedge fund managers positioned agai...

From CNBC.com: The financial crisis of 2008 was a turning point for the hedge fund industry. More than 200 funds went out of business, according to Hedge Fund Intelligence. And outflows of investor capital in 2008-2009, exceeding $70 billion, pressed those still standing to justify their management and performance fees. This year, with a meager 1.2 percent return year-to-date according to Hedge F...

From Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Volatile markets benefit specialized strategies, says Jesse J. Redmond Founder and Co-Portfolio Manager at Evolved Alpha, LLC, a Montecito, California-based multistrategy hedge fund that provides transparent, liquid and secure access to specialized alpha-return strategies trading liquid fi...

Opalesque Industry Update – “It is a jungle out there” says Ashwan Khanna, chairman of Elephant Family, a conservation charity, who plans to transform Edinburgh into a jungle filled with animals and replace the sounds of the city with the trumpeting of elephants, birdsong and monkey chatter. The event will feature 130 life size sculptures of five different endangered species and aims to...

Multi-asset class managers stand to gain more from variable annuity inflows From PIonline.com: Money managers with dynamic multi-asset class capabilities are poised to grab a bigger piece of the $1.5 trillion variable annuity asset pie as insurance companies add more risk-based investment strategies to their programs. Among those benefiting early on from that budding ...

Opalesque Industry Update - Volatility has been high this year, and especially last week – thanks partly to panic following Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S.’s credit rating and concerns about European economies. But stocks are starting to stabilize again. VIX’ value went from almost 16 on July 1st to 48 on August 8th. It was at nearly 32 yesterday (August 15th). Comparative...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: The environment is tough for hedge fund start-ups these days; that much is known. Participant at Opalesque�s recent London Roundtable came up with an interesting way to start-up successfully. They also discussed why it is good - or bad - that it has become more...

Texas teachers agree hedge fund move From FT.com: Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, last month signed into law measures which allow the Teacher Retirement System of Texas to invest up to a tenth of its assets with hedge funds. For the teachers of Texas who had testified in favor of raising the cap, 4 per cent of their retirement savings in hedge funds just wasn’t enough....

Opalesque Industry Update – Israel Englander may be planning to sell a minority stake in Millennium Management, and the Wall Street Journal reported that talks for a 20% share of the firm are currently estimated at a value of $300m to $500m. The firm, which is up more than 6% according to investors, has done much better than many of its industry peers with the volatile 2011 markets. ...

From Precy Dumlao, Opalesque Asia: Large hedge fund startups, usually with a minimum of $75m in assets under management (AuM) consistently underperform, yet it is easier for this hedge fund group to raise assets at a much higher rate compared with their smaller counterparts. This was the findings of GFIA, a Singapore-based res...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Fixed Income has seen steady inflows this year and remains one of the few bright spots amongst hedge fund strategies. In June performance, fixed income arbitrage is proving itself once again to have the best opportunity set in 2011. Notching returns of +2.38% YTD (Dow Jones Credit Suisse Fixed Income Arb Index). And, although the BarclayHedge...

by Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London:Persuasive communication skills is what hedge fund managers can learn from Dan Broden of New York based Broden Communications. He describes his firm as a communications training consultancy and he works with executives from a variety of industries including financial organisations and hedge fund groups on developing their media interview skills and pr...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Markets are scared by the recent drops in oil prices; the Greek debt crisis (and the euro still falling); China’s inflation (though Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has just declared efforts to stop it have worked); and the Middle-Eastern uprisings. To own oil, one must believe that the global economy is stable or growing. Investors who stop believing it ...

By Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London: The increased participation of pension funds and other institutional investors in the alternatives space has given rise to a new client base for Maples Fund Services. Toni Pinkerton, Global Head of Fund Services at Maples, explains the growing pressure that the needs of these institutional investors have placed on their fund managers to operate wit...

From Bloomberg.com: Duet Commodities Fund rose 2.9 percent in June, boosting this year’s return to 23 percent after profitable trades in metals and oil. “This month we have made the vast majority of returns in the platinum group of metals and energy,” Duet Commodities’ Chief Investment Officer Tony Hall said today by e-mail. The platinum group includes platinum, palladium and rhodium. ...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: With pension funds like behemoth investor CalPERS allocating to emerging hedge fund managers ($400m to three managers last month alone), and banks like Goldman Sachs looking to cash in on the success of emergin...

By Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London Specialist research and performance evaluation firm Inalytics and alternatives managers GLG have conducted a case study which shows that evaluation of every decision a manager makes in managing his or her portfolio gives a reliable measure of skill. In Analysis of Management Skill, Inalytics’ Rick di Mascio and GLG’s Simon Savage refer to a...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: According to some Swiss researchers, only a small proportion of hedge fund managers can and do produce alpha – and the majority simply ride the markets. That also depends on each strategy, and whether they are applied authentically or not. On 1st May 2008, Laurent Barras of the Imperial College London, Olivier Scaillet of the University o...

From Financial-planning.com: As institutional investors grow more interested in emerging market and alternative asset classes, they are looking for managers to hire around the world. In Mercer’s 2010 Global Manager Search Trends report, the employee benefits and search consultant announced today an increase in investors searching for managers of emerging market stock and debt, real estate, commodi...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: A recent survey by Goldman Sachs (Bloomberg) showed the investment bank customers who invest in hedge funds are anticipating that 90% of their allocations will be won by managers th...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: During the Och Ziff quarterly call with analysts on Tuesday, Daniel S Och, Chairman and CEO, pointed to a longer due diligence period within the hedge fund industry, when speaking about asset raising trends. The criteria for manager selection has become longer, as investors have become more careful in their portfolio building, he explained. Th...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: For hedge funds, Boston is a great town to manage money in, commented Eric Brock, Portfolio Manager at $3.3bn Clough Capital during the last Opalesque Boston Roundtable held in late 2010. The city is also a major financial center for traditional...

From Forbes.com:…Friday, as gold prices hit a new all-time high – $1486 an ounce($1500 is around the corner),the University of Texas Investment Management Co., revealed that 5% of its $19.9 billion endowment(it handles Texas A&M as well) was in actual bars of gold bullion in a New York bank vault owned by HSBC Holdings, the London based global banking institution. Not in any gold ETF or in...

By Beverly Chandler, Opalesque London Chris Manser is to leave his position as Global Head of AXA Funds of Hedge Funds in order to pursue other opportunities and is believed not to have elaborated further on his future plans. Manser has been with the firm since February 2007 and will leave at the end of June this year. While he has been with AXA assets under management in the fund of hedg...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Recognizing that the hedge fund industry has gone through a time of growth that has split funds into two camps, large, multi-billion dollar funds, and smaller, boutique managers, family office CM Capital Corporation is looking to invest in funds with under $1bn in assets. “Right now we are really trying to re-seed the gene pool and find some ma...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: As hedge fund allocations have risen over the past few months, the few large seed firms left post-crisis have begun making a push for the emerging managers they have seeded and continue to hunt for more. Blackstone Group recently announced that $355m has been raised from investors for its new seed fund the Strategic Alliance Fund II. And FRM ...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: According to BarclayHedge Database, $275m New York-based firm Phoenix Investment Adviser, manager of the JLP Credit Opportunity Fund has returned +7.71% through February in 2011, following the impressive returns the firm delivered in 2010 (+36.33%) and 2009 (+158.95%). ...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. That is the expected forecast for much of civilization by 2025, according to the UN. In 2011 current freshwater sources satisfy only 50% of the world demand, and in 14 short years that demand is expected to increase by 25%. While emerging market growth has spurred investing in agriculture and n...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Vancouver-based Sherpa Asset Management views the June 2008 launch of the firm’s Sherpa Diversified Returns Fund as “fortunate timing in hindsight” even though they took the equity long/short fund out into the most volatile equity markets in recent history. By the end of the firs...

MassPRIM shifts from fund of funds to more direct investing From AI-cio.com: In the $48.7 billion Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management (MassPRIM) Board's comprehensive asset allocation review, the fund has decided to shift from a fully fund-of-funds investment strategy to incorporating more direct hedge funds, reflecting the need to adapt as circu...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Managed account firms found themselves in the spotlight after the liquidity crisis in the hedge fund industry had many investors looking for a way to maintain more control over their investments. In the months since, as the financial markets grew stronger and performance stabilized, managed accounts maintained a higher stream of inflows, but ...

From the NYTimes Dealbook: The founder of SAC Capital Advisers, the $12 billion hedge fund in Stamford, Conn., sat for a rare wide-ranging interview with Paul Tudor Jones, another hedge fund manager, where he discussed his favorite stocks and a whole lot more. The interview was part of a two-day conference at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Midtown Manhattan sponsored by ISI, the Wall Street research...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Stonehenge Asset Management (SAM) is launching a new Futures and FX diversified short-term quantitative trading fund. They are offering a straight ‘vanilla’ fund along with a principal protected option without a lock-up or early withdrawal fee. The Florida-based Stonehenge, named after the monuments which have “stood the test of...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: If you live in the Northeast US by now you've realized that winter is here. And with 19 inches of snow still piled up on every street corner and a major ice storm ready to hit over the next 72 hours, it has become apparent that business continuity plans in place for major disasters, can also serve to increase productivity during more m...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: This week, California-based Welton Investment Corporation posted 2010 returns of +18.31% for its flagship Global Directional Portfolio (GDP) managed futures program. Launched in 2004, the $550m program's annualized returns since inception are +14.34% and experienced only one...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: It is often said that managed futures funds are market neutral: they are investments that are not correlated to the rest of the market. But according to recent research by Newedge Prime Brokerage, managed futures strategies and the S&P500 can and do demonstrate a high level of correlation "over certain periods." "In...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Nikhil Jhangiani, the CIO of Geneva-based investment manager Peak Partners, told Opalesque of the imminent launch of a hybrid fund of funds (FoFs) called Granite Emerging Market Fund of Funds. It will be launched on 1st February with $10m from outside investors. The fund wants to profit from opportunities in the emerging markets, which ha...

From Kirsten Bischoff, Opalesque New York: Since January 2009, the performance of large fund of hedge funds (FoHFs) has tracked alongside that of large, single strategy hedge funds (according to HFN's Fund of hedge funds strategy report for December 2010). This is due to the fact that those FoHFs that survived the 2008/2009 market crisis were then additionally hampered by linge...