Hedged Mutual Funds, Scandinavian Hedge Funds

Alpha Capitals Brad Alford Launches Hedged Mutual Funds (II Magazine)
Can a collection of mutual funds deliver the same or better performance than hedge funds and with much less risk? Alpha Capital Management’s Brad Alford seems to think so. He recently launched two of what he calls hedged mutual funds — which are really funds of mutual funds — that he asserts provide access to hedge fund like strategies with the fee structure, daily liquidity, and regulatory requirements of mutual funds.

Scandinavia’s Brummer Closes Its Asian Hedge Fund on Poor Returns (Bloomberg)
Brummer & Partners, the largest Scandinavian hedge fund, closed its Asia-focused equity fund and the firm managing it after its performance damped returns, according to the Stockholm-based company’s annual report. The Karakoram fund, which bet on rising and falling stock prices in Asia outside Japan, lost 15.4 percent last year, the worst performer in a global portfolio of the firm’s hedge funds, the annual report published on Feb. 15 shows. The fund, which started trading in July 2009, had assets of $234 million as of Dec. 31, according to the report seen by Bloomberg News.

Plenum Investment Hedge Fund Adviser Henrik Wennberg Resigns (Bloomberg)
Henrik Wennberg, who co-founded two Nordic electricity hedge funds at Plenum Investments Ltd., has resigned from the Zurich-based money manager, Plenum Chief Executive Officer Rainer Gruenig said today by e-mail. … The Plenum Power Surge fund gained 24 percent in 2010, according to data on Bloomberg and is managed by Jukka Virtala and Mathias Wennberg, Henrik Wennberg’s brother.

Jiau, Accused Of Passing Tips To Hedge Funds, Pleads Not Guilty (FinAlternatives)
Winifred Jiau, the former expert-network consultant and one of a dozen people charged in the U.S. Justice Department’s massive insider-trading investigation, has pleaded not guilty. Jiau, the seventh person arrested in the case, is charged with conspiracy and securities fraud and faces more than 20 years in prison if convicted. She is accused of passing confidential information about at least two companies to two hedge fund employees. One of those men, Noah Freeman, a former portfolio manager at SAC Capital Advisors, Sonar Capital Management and Brookside Capital, has already pleaded guilty in the case and is cooperating with prosecutors.