Mesirow’s Klopfenstein Plans Hedge Fund (Finalternatives)
A senior Mesirow Financial Holdings executive and currency trader is leaving the firm to found his own hedge fund. Gary Klopfenstein plans to launch a small boutique to manage currency assets and other alternative investments, Crain’s Chicago Business reports. He will leave Mesirow, where he is senior managing director of currency management, in July. “Going forward, I will focus on partnering with a very limited number of sophisticated global institutions to provide unique solutions to the management of currency and other alternative investments as well as pursuing various business development initiatives,” Klopfenstein wrote to clients of his planned GK Investment Management.
Banned hedge fund manager Micalizzi arrested in Italy: prosecutors (Reuters)
Alberto Micalizzi, a former university professor and ex-hedge fund manager who was fined £3 million ($5.1 million) in 2012 for concealing massive losses to investors, has been arrested in Italy, Milan prosecutors said on Wednesday [May 21]. In a statement, prosecutors said they had also issued arrest warrants for 14 associates of Micalizzi, some of whom are already in jail. They did not give further details. A legal source told Reuters Micalizzi was arrested as part of an investigation into a €600 million ($821.73 million) fraud that has allegedly damaged a range of companies including gas operator Snam, Pirelli, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM), UBI Banca and UBS AG (ADR) (NYSE:UBS).
Hedge Funds Won’t Make You Rich (BloombergView)
The recent release of Institutional Investor Alpha’s hedge-fund survey has everyone asking how the fund managers continue to make so much money. Academics and journalists alike point out that hedge funds, as a class, haven’t delivered above-market after-fee returns for quite some time. Hedge funds, of course, get paid whether the market goes up or down, so the real question is why hedge funds continue to receive large inflows of capital from pension funds and other investors. The New Yorker magazine’s John Cassidy has as good roundup of the most prominent theories. He includes some good links to research on the question of whether hedge funds deliver superior risk-adjusted returns, or offer significant diversification potential.
The hedge fund job you didn’t know you wanted that you probably can’t get (eFinancialCareers)
Earlier this month, Bloomberg published a fascinating article on three extremely low-profile hedge fund partners who, unbeknownst to the world, had given away $13 billion to charitable causes from the fortune they’ve so quietly amassed. They run a small quant fund you’ve likely never heard – and they’re hiring. TGS Management, which operates in small, non-descript office buildings in Princeton, New Jersey and Irvine, California, launched more than 25 years ago as one of the first quantitative investing firms. The partners – Andrew Shechtel, C. Frederick Taylor and now-retired David Gelbaum – were so successful in the early stages of building the company that they required minimal outside investment, hence the lack of name recognition, of which they have no want.
Good Guys: Renée Haugerud Narrows the Gender Gap One Trader at a Time (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
After working as a trader for years and then starting and running her own hedge fund firm, Renée Haugerud kept running into two problems when trying to hire people: There was a lack of female traders, and new hires fresh from college didn’t have the skills she needed. To remedy both of these issues, Haugerud, founder and chief investment officer of New York–based Galtere, along with her husband, John Murphy, started the Galtere Institute: Finance for the Future Initiative at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2009. (Murphy is an alumnus.) The couple seeded the institute with $1.5 million; it offers access to a Bloomberg trading lab and classes, and hosts an annual Behavioral Finance Symposium.
Hedge fund 400 Capital gains on RMBS bets, makes new hires (Reuters)
Hedge fund 400 Capital returned 3.26 percent during the first three months of 2014, beating its benchmarks as bets on residential mortgage backed securities paid off. The firm, founded five years ago and run by Chris Hentemann, told clients in its first quarter letter seen by Reuters, “The overweighting to RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) drove absolute returns for the fund in 1Q14.” The fund’s gains beat the HFRI fund weighted composite index’ 1.1 percent return as well as the Barclay’s U.S. Aggregate return of 1.84 percent. Last year the fund returned 15.23 percent and its average annual return is 20.43 percent.
A Hedge-Funder Is Selling Brooklyn’s Priciest Home For $32 Million (BusinessInsider)
A condo penthouse in Brooklyn Heights just went on the market for a whopping $32 million, the highest asking price ever in Brooklyn. The sellers are Stuart Leaf, founder of Cadogan Management hedge fund, and his wife, Claire Silberman Leaf, a philanthropist and former lawyer, according to The Brooklyn Eagle. The home was originally three units that the Leafs renovated and turned into one massive home.
Recommended Reading:
David Shaw’s Top Picks and Similarities with Warren Buffett’s 13F
Pine River Capital Management’s Top Bullish Moves During the First Quarter
Bridgewater Associates’ First Quarter Largest Equity Holdings
