Billionaire Grudge Match Nears As Tom Steyer Talks Up Taking On Trump For The White House (Forbes)
Billionaire investor Tom Steyer looks set to enter the race for the Democratic nomination, and the ticket to take on President Donald Trump in 2020. According to a report by Politico, Steyer held a private conference call last week to announce he was planning to run. The call brought together staff at Steyer’s Need to Impeach petition, his NextGen America environmental advocacy nonprofit, and his Sacramento office. Steyer, a billionaire hedge fund manager, environmentalist, and a vocal critic of Donald Trump, spent 26 years running hedge fund Farallon Capital, but sold his stake in 2012 to focus on politics.
Financier Epstein Pleads Not Guilty to U.S. Charges of Sex Trafficking (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) – American financier Jeffrey Epstein pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of sex trafficking as prosecutors accused him of luring dozens of girls as young as 14 to his luxury homes in New York and Florida and paying them for sex acts. An indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan accused Epstein, 66, of arranging for girls to perform nude “massages” and other sex acts, and paying some girls to recruit others, from at least 2002 to 2005. The former hedge fund manager “intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact under the age of 18, including because, in some instances, minor victims expressly told him their age,” the indictment said.
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Crypto Asset Manager Granted AIFM Approval/ (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Prime Factor Capital, a London-based asset manager specialised in cryptocurrencies, has been authorised by the UK’s financial markets regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as an Alternative Investment Fund Manager (AIFM). This is the first dedicated crypto asset manager to have been granted this status from UK regulators. Prime Factor Capital was founded in 2017 by Nic Niedermowwe, who previously worked as an energy derivatives trader at German utility RWE, and Michael Wong, who spent 11 years at BlackRock. The asset manager seeks to provide solutions for professional investors seeking exposure to cryptocurrencies.
Opalesque Roundup: All Hedge Fund Strategies Show Sweet Gains in June: Hedge Fund News, Week 25 (Opalesque.com)
In the week ending July 5th, 2019, Lyxor said that all hedge funds strategies delivered positive returns in June 2019 – L/S Equity Directional, L/S Credit and Market Neutral L/S outperformed. CTAs outperformed in June (+2.8%) due to their long equity / long fixed income positioning. Meanwhile, Brevan Howard Asset Management‘s flagship hedge fund returned 3.9% in June, capping off its best first half since 2009. The Master Fund is up 9.3% in the first six months, building on a 12.4% gain in 2018. It has emerged as one of the big winners from this year’s steep plunge in US government bond yields, as the hedge fund continued its turnaround after years of lacklustre performance and client withdrawals. Further in performance news, Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, posted returns for 2018 that not only outperformed benchmark indexes for various asset classes, but also many of its peers and Dan Loeb‘s Third Point capped a strong second quarter with another gain in June as its Third Point Offshore fund rose 3.8 percent in June.
Fosun Moves on London-based Investment Manager (PitchBook.com)
Investment and asset management conglomerate Fosun has acquired a majority holding in Tenax Capital. The deal seals the Chinese investor a London-based hedge fund manager with a focus on the ILS and reinsurance sector and around €1 billion of assets under management.
White Paper Calls for Hedge Funds to Spend More on Automation (FinExtra.com)
Truss Edge, the fintech platform specializing in the automation of critical trading, reporting and data processing tasks within hedge funds, has today released the results of its 2019 white paper on Hedge Fund Portfolio Management Systems. The white paper is based on feedback from 50 fund services providers and hedge funds from around the world. Hedge funds, administrators, custodians, law firms, fund platforms and consultants in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific region provided their thoughts on the purchase and deployment of portfolio management and reporting technology during Q1 2019.
