From FT.com: A recent court ruling involving the $24bn buyout of Dell could mean "game over" for hedge funds that have profited from asking US judges to boost the prices of takeovers after they have closed. Hedge funds such as Merion Capital and Magnetar have raised a total of more than $1bn from investors in recent years to fund lawsuits in which they challenge the fairness of the price...

The California Public Employee's Retirement System Board of Administration voted on the asset allocation of the Fund's investment portfolio for the next four years. Of the four options under consideration, the Board selected the allocation of assets that is most similar to the current portfolio. "We've done significant analysis to get to this point," said Henry...

Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Listed diversified banking group Mediobanca SpA said it has acquired a majority stake in Geneva-based hedge fund firm RAM Active Investments SA (RAM AI), an active and alternative asset manager offering a range of actively managed and alternative systematic fundamental equity and tactical fixed-inc...

Italy's Carige to sell consumer credit arm to Chenavari Italy's Banca Carige aims to sell its consumer credit unit to London-based hedge fund Chenavari by Dec. 6 when a vital 560 million euro ($664 million) cash call ends. Genoa-based Carige must comply by the end of the year with European Central Bank demands that it boosts its capital and starts cutting ba...

How guerilla tactics toppled RenTech's Robert Mercer From Institutionalinestor.com: In late October, Sleeping Giants, the mysterious Twitter group behind a campaign against Breitbart, announced that it had set its sights on a new target: the institutions invested in Renaissance Technologies. According to the group, these pension funds, universities, and charities...

Tages Capital steps in to rescue Italy's Banca Carige From TheTimes.co.uk: A little known London hedge fund has played a pivotal role in the first rescue of an Italian bank without state intervention since the country's bad debt crisis started three years ago. Banca Carige, a Genovese lender that regulators have ordered to raise €560 million or be w...

Saudi-Iran war would create this domino effect of global disaster From CNBC.com: Events appear to be spinning out of control in the Middle East, and the threat a Saudi-Iranian war is looking increasingly credible. Make no mistake, an out and out conflict between the two nations would be an unmitigated disaster for the region and the world. In the latest incident, Hout...

Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Billionaire Mario Gabelli, the founder of the Gabelli Asset Management Company Investors (GAMCO Investors), is backing New York-based hedge fund management firm Gondor Capital Management by investing in its domestic hedge fund Gondor...

From Bloomberg.com: A tax dispute involving Renaissance Technologies, the hedge fund firm whose co-chief executive officer is a prominent backer of President Donald Trump, is advancing to a new phase. Members of the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Appeals are scheduled to meet with lawyers for Renaissance in New York on Nov. 7, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The meet...

From Reuters.com: Billionaire investor Seth Klarman on Wednesday resisted calls for Puerto Rico's debt to be wiped out and said the island's residents will be better off in the long run if obligations are honored. Klarman comments came in an email to investors, offering fresh details about how his $30 billion hedge fund Baupost Group sees its bet on Puerto Rican bonds after H...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: A newly-launched India focused fund has placed itself in a sweet spot by applying a strategies that are rare in that particular market, namely, factor-based systematic and market neutral. The Elysium India Fund, manage...

Matthias Knab, Opalesque: Marcos Lopez de Prado from Guggenheim Partners says that the rate of failure in quantitative finance is high, and particularly so in financial machine learning. The few managers who succeed amass a large amount of assets, and deliver consistently exceptional performance to their investors. However, that is a rare outcome, for reasons that will become apparent in ...

David Stockman: Trump tax reform overhaul is a pipe dream, stocks are heading for 40-70% plunge From CNBC.com: David Stockman is warning about the Trump administration's tax overhaul plan, Federal Reserve policy, saying they could play into a severe stock market sell-off. Stockman, the Reagan administration's director of the Office of Management and Budget, ...

From Foxbusiness.com: Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio said Friday that almost half of the jobs in the next two decades will be replaced by artificial intelligence. "By in large, the world is going to largely consist of people who can take language and put it into code, which then allows the computer to operate like a brain or people who are going to be displaced by that,&...

Neuberger Berman, a private, independent, employee-owned investment manager, announced that NB Private Equity Credit Opportunities Fund LP closed on $1.1 billion of limited partner commitments. The Fund seeks to invest in the secured and unsecured debt of private equity-backed companies, primarily in secondary market transactions, taking advantage of credit market dislocations, inefficiencies, and...

Hedge funds used to love shorting China. Now, not so much From Bloomberg.com: A sharp devaluation. A credit crisis. And an economic hard landing. That's what some of the biggest names in the hedge fund industry were predicting for China after the nation's stocks and currency tumbled in 2015. Two years later, it hasn't worked out the way pess...

Authored by Dr. Tillmann Sachs, CIO and Head of Research at London-based J8 Capital Management. Recently, an investor asked if investing in CTAs was investing in a crowded trade. We think not! A) According to the Bank of International Settlem...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: State Street Global Advisors sold ...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: Left Brain Capital Management, which manages Left Brain Capital Appreciation Fund L.P., a long-biased hedge fund focused on growth, has rece...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Over the past decade, investors have steadily increased investments in emerging markets private funds. Allocations to the cohort have increased from $93 billion in December 2006 to $564 billion in September 2016, according to data from research firm Preqin. However, country funds and regional funds haven't always delivered when it comes to perfor...

CBOE plans to launch bitcoin futures, announces agreement with Winklevoss brothers' digital currency exchange From CNBC.com: The Chicago Board Options Exchange, the largest U.S. options exchange, is planning to launch its own bitcoin derivatives trading products by early next year. Pending review from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CBOE Future...

Hedge funds making risky bet on Venezuelan bonds ahead of widely condemned vote From HITC.com: One particular trade is in the November 2017 bond of the state-owned oil company, which faces the possibility of sanctions. Some hedge funds are taking big bets on Venezuelan debt ahead of a controversial national vote on Sunday that has sparked severe unrest in that country...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Oaktree's co-chairman Howard Marks' latest memo is another cautionary one that advocates low-risk investments. He highlights what he thi...

The machines are coming... Elon Musk's grim warning From Tenplay.com.au: Tesla chief Elon Musk has called on US Governors to take 'decisive' action to curtail "the greatest risk we face as a civilization": Artificial Intelligence, or AI. Speaking at a meeting of the National Governor Association in the US on Saturday, Musk said people should b...

From Bloomberg.com: Crispin Odey, who made money for a second straight month by sticking to bearish equity bets, said the chance of a market crash is rising as growth slows and the Federal Reserve normalizes interest rates. The credit cycle boosted by loose monetary policy has peaked and there's a widespread slowdown in the auto, commodity, industrial and retail sectors, Odey wrote in a lette...

Matthias Knab, Opalesque: Neal Berger is is President of Eagle's View Asset Management and an investor and allocator I've known and respected for many years. His most recent extended market commentary, which is in parts included below, is a highly recommended read and a candid analysis why 'the lackluster performance from some historically smooth and stead...

U.S. hedge fund in anonymous bet against Tesco shares From FT.com: A $20bn New York hedge fund is using an offshore shell company to anonymously bet against the shares of the UK supermarket Tesco, raising fresh questions over the efficacy of European short selling disclosure rules. Tiger Global, one of the world's largest hedge funds, has made use of ...

Matthias Knab, Opalesque: Standish Mellon Asset Management Company writes on Harvest Exchange: After several difficult years, the outlook for emerging market debt (EMD) denominated in local currency has brightened considerably. From May 2013 to January...

Managed futures setting stage for dramatic growth From PIOnline.com: Investment in managed futures strategies is on the rise as asset owners tap into the equity risk reduction and downside protection inherent in systematic trend-following approaches. Institutional investors have been pumping assets into managed futures strategies, with especially strong asset gains in...

Change desperately needed in managing N.J. public pension funds From NJ.com: ...The reason for the tension last year was obvious - under Byrne's direction, New Jersey's pension fund performance was among the worst of large public pension funds in the entire nation - actually losing just under 1 percent of assets. Fast forward one year later to th...

By Raj Mohamad, Founder, Five Pillars Pte Ltd, Singapore The Muslim world has produced numerous multi-disciplinary scholars and polymaths. Just one example would be Musa Al-Khwarizmi, the renowned astronomer, mathematician and geographer - heralded beyond the Islamic community as father of...

Tudor Jones backs AI hedge funds From FT.com: Hedge fund magnate Paul Tudor Jones has invested in a brace of artificial-intelligence powered "quantitative" hedge funds, underscoring the increasing acceptance that the industry will need to turn more to technology and away from traditional human traders. The billionaire investor has invested in CargoMetrics, a...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: The London-based, Swiss-born manager of the RoboCap UCITS Fund, talks to Opalesque about investing in the robotics revolution. RoboCap ...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: A Dallas-based emerging manager talks about his passion for small caps and sticking to your guns - namely, staying concentrated and resisting the siren call of high AuM. Breach Inlet Capital Management invests in North ...

Billionaire Dan Och suggests worst is over after $6.9 billion exits his hedge fund firm in 2017 From Forbes.com: Billionaire Dan Och's Och-Ziff Capital Management said on Tuesday that investors had pulled $6.9 billion out of the hedge fund firm this year and assets under management had declined to $32 billion. The publicly traded hedge fund firm said net outflows...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: Dr. Richard Bateson, quant fund manager and physicist, has recently registered his new fund management company with the U...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York for New Managers: Machine driven strategies are having a bit of a moment in the hedge fund world right now. Systematic funds have outperformed other strategies at a time when all eyes seem to be on performance and price. The same is true for the liqui...

U.S. public funds split on absolute return programs From SWFinstitute.org: Once a coveted beat by financial journalists in the 2000s, hedge funds have taken a deep step back, as more U.S. pension funds begin to question the usefulness of hedge fund programs. Hedge funds are facing redemptions everywhere. For example, in 2016, hedge fund titan Richard Perry winded up h...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: Private equity fund Dyal Capital Partners II has taken a stake in $11.5 billion credit hedge fund Sound Point Capital. Dyal Capital Partners is an investment unit within Neuberger Berman Group that provides permanent capital to hedge funds and private equity firms by investing in non-voting minority stakes within those firms. Dyal is on its third fund f...

Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York: $19 billion Philadelphia-based FS Investments has launched a new interval fund which will invest in energy. The FS Energy Total Return Fund is the firm's first closed-end interval fund and will invest opportunistically in energy companies and assets. FS will be targeting $2 billion for its new energy fund initially, but total capacity c...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Even as the hedge fund industry's total assets exceeded the $3tln milestone last year, hedge fund liquidations increased. So much so that 2016 had the highest number of liquidations since 2008, claims the latest HFR Market Microstructure Report, released by HFR, the hedge fund indexation provider. For the full yea...

This is what happens when private equity firms run out of things to buy From Zerohedge.com: What do you do when you're part of an industry that has levered up $100's of billions of dollars in investor capital and paid a handsome premium for pretty much every asset available all while "excess cash sits on the sidelines" because there are just no dea...

Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Global provider and alternative investment manager Investcorp has completed its acquisition and integration of the debt management business of 3i from 3i Group plc. The business, now recognized as Investcorp Credit Management, adds $11bn of assets under management, bringing the total to approximately $21.4bn. Commenting on the announcement, Mohamme...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva for New Managers: Investment manager Peter Moon has recently launched a CTA program called 3SD Countertrend, that is run through managed accounts out of Connecticut-based 3SD Capital. The...

From Bloomberg.com: Kuwait Investment Authority is set to name Farouk Bastaki as managing director, replacing Bader Al Saad who ran the world's fifth-largest sovereign wealth fund for 14 years, a person familiar with the matter said. The KIA, as the fund is known, is finalizing the appointment, said the person, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Kuwaiti newspaper ...

Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: With the country's outstanding fund management industry at $54bn and growing, the Philippine market and its investors are ready to invest in "more sophisticated" asset management products, like hedge funds and alternative investments, said Deanno J. Basas, president of the Fund Management Association of the Philippines and Managing Director...

From Businessinsider.com: A strategy run by Renaissance Technologies, the secretive multibillion hedge fund firm, is attracting fresh money. The firm's Renaissance Institutional Equity Fund (RIEF) grew by about $4 billion in 2016, ending the year with $14.9 billion after starting 2016 with about $10.9 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person declined to ...

Fund manager fights SEC claims over 'death put' scheme From Law360.com: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's administrative suit claiming a New York hedge fund manager defrauded options issuers by recruiting terminally ill patients to profit on early redemptions after their deaths opened Monday, as the manager admitted portions of his d...

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Mariner Investment Group, an alternative asset manager headquartered in New York, has been gradually increasing its ETF arbitrage trades, and is practically taking on the role of market maker as a result. Bill Michaelcheck, founder and CIO of Mariner and Jamie Silver, managing director, explain why. Bill Michae...

This hedge fund made 37% betting on banks in 2016 and remains bullish after the Trump rally From Forbes.com: Can bank stocks continue to rise after a 28% surge in the KBW Bank Index in 2016, fueled by a post-election rally as stock pickers returned to the beaten down sector? Forget the so-called 'Trump Bump' because the rally has only begun, say Martin Fried...

Komfie Manalo, Opalesque Asia: Byron R. Wien, Vice Chairman of Multi-Asset Investing at Blackstone, released his list of Ten Surprises for 2017. This is the 32nd year Byron has given his views on a number of economic, financial market and political surp...