Average large US hedge fund holds $1.8bn in assets (CityAM)
The biggest hedge funds in the United States held $1.47 trillion (£970bn) in net assets and $1.06 trillion in secured and unsecured borrowings as of the fourth quarter, according to the first report on confidential data provided to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Some 823 hedge funds holding over $500m each in net assets have been asked to provide detailed data on their leverage, exposure to risk and liquidity by the SEC, which in turn has been required to collect that information and submit an annual report to Congress on how it has been used under a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. This means the average large US hedge fund holds approximately $1.786bn.
Blackstone: Nice Stock, Stupid Product? (YCharts)
Now that the SEC lifted an 80-year ban that kept hedge funds from advertising, the industry faces a bit of a conundrum: what to advertise? As Bloomberg BusinessWeek recently noted in a damning cover story titled “Hedge Funds are For Suckers,” the average hedge fund has underperformed a long-only stock index fund in eight of the last 10 calendar years. …The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE:BX), that bastion of exclusivity for the 1% and institutional investors, has come up with another idea: go full-bore retail by offering your wares to the masses. The firm just launched the The Blackstone Group L.P. (NYSE:BX) Alternative Multi-Manager mutual fund that advisors and broker dealers can use for their individual investor clients. Yes, a straight-up, old school, for-the-hoi-polloi mutual fund.
SEC Says Largest U.S. Hedge Funds’ Debt Is More Than $1 Trillion (BusinessWeek)
The nation’s largest hedge funds had $1.47 trillion in net assets and more than $1 trillion in borrowings as of the fourth quarter, according to the first report compiled on confidential data they provided to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC’s Division of Investment Management issued the report to Congress last week using figures from money managers who run private funds with gross assets of at least $150 million, including borrowed capital, and the agency broke out figures for the biggest firms. Congress ordered the SEC to collect information from private-equity and hedge-fund managers under a provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act designed to help regulators monitor risk in the financial system.
The New Wave of Hedge Fund Activism (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
This is not your father’s hedge fund activism. At the Institutional Investor/CNBC Delivering Alpha conference earlier this month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew talked about the importance of the rule of law in the financial world. “I like what he said about how you have to obey the rule of law,” said Richard Perry, CEO of Perry Capital in New York, on the panel that followed Lew’s appearance. It was an inside joke, referring to Perry Capital’s own lawsuit against the U. S. Treasury Department. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the government has been the owner of mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Roc liquidates flagship and plans to start over (HedgefundIntelligence)
Roc Capital Management, Arvind Raghunathan’s once fast-growing quantitative equity hedge fund firm, which boasts backing from Deutsche Bank AG (USA) (NYSE:DB) and the billionaire Mittal steel family, is liquidating its flagship fund and starting over with a new employee-funded vehicle after failing to recover from early losses. The Roc Capital Partners Fund will complete its wind down today, according to people familiar with the situation. Roc had $642 million in discretionary assets under management as of March 1, according to its most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The New York-based firm and its core…
Fortress Says Second-Quarter Profit Tripled on Hedge-Fund Fees (Bloomberg)
Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG), the first publicly traded private-equity and hedge-fund manager in the U.S., said second-quarter profit tripled because of higher fees paid to the firm for managing its funds. Pretax distributable earnings, which exclude some compensation costs and other items, increased to $148 million, or 30 cents a share, from $50 million, or 9 cents, a year earlier, New York-based Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG) said today in a statement. Analysts had expected adjusted profit of 20 cents a share, according to the average of seven estimates in a Bloomberg survey.
