ASX to open Singapore office in 2014 to attract hedge fund cash (The Malay Mail Online)
ASX Ltd. will hire staff for a new office in Singapore this year as Australia’s main exchange operator seeks to do more business with Asian hedge funds and proprietary traders. “It will be a meaningful presence,” Peter Hiom, Sydney- based deputy chief executive officer at ASX, said in an interview January 31, adding that the Singapore office will focus on derivatives products. “There’s an untapped opportunity for us in Southeast Asia.” The Australian bourse is expanding in derivatives, already its biggest source of revenue, as trading volumes for cash equities in its home market stagnate.
When corporate raiders come knocking (The Australian)
Daniel Loeb, 52, has a reputation for sending blistering critiques to companies he intends to overhaul, such as Sony Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:SNE) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO). This time, he attacked the performance and management of Sothebys (NYSE:BID), calling the auction house “an Old Master painting in desperate need of restoration”. Sotheby’s has called Loeb’s campaign “baseless”, but as he amassed a 9.3 per cent stake in the company last year, the house has replaced several top executives, and has said it would release a capital allocation review that could offer more ideas to wring out value for shareholders. Last week, Sotheby’s announced it would pay a $US300 million ($342.4m) special dividend to shareholders and may sell its New York headquarters.
Hedge Fund Ads on the Way (On Wall Street)
Hedge fund manager Jonathan Hoenig wants you to know he’s not trying to be elitist. “There’s this perception that hedge funds are exclusive, but that perception is born from the regulations,” he says. Those regulations include limits around the investors the fund can accept and, until last September, a long-standing ban on hedge fund advertising and other forms of general solicitation. To prove the point, Hoenig stepped out with a print advertisement for his Chicago-based firm, Capitalistpig, even before a Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act provision made the practice legal.
Dalio Says Bridgewater Like An ‘Intellectual Navy SEALs’ (FINalternatives)
Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio took his gospel of radical transparency to the mainstream this week, with an appearance on “CBS This Morning.” The hedge fund billionaire sought to explain his “principles” and their controversial application at Bridgewater. “What we do is we step back and we get to basically the fundamentals of how people think differently,” Dalio told Charlie Rose. “What people are good or bad at. What they’re like. We get at what they’re like. And then what to do about that. It’s like going into an intellectual Navy SEALs…”
Surge in shareholder activism straining investors’ resources (Pensions & Investments)
The proxy season has triggered a gold rush of activist institutional investors challenging companies. But this swell in corporate governance activity could strain investors’ resources, especially related to executive pay issues and shareholder engagements. Shareholders have been bolstered by recent investment returns in companies in which activists have been involved, said Patrick McGurn, special counsel, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc., Rockville, Md. ISS is a corporate governance and proxy-voting advisory firm. Activist hedge funds outperformed other hedge fund strategies in 2013, raising the attractiveness of the strategy for new funds and assets, Mr. McGurn said. But hedge fund returns generally lagged the Standard & Poor’s 500, he said.
