Altman Leads Hedge-Fund Managers Betting Stock Rally to Continue (SFGate)
Jeff Altman and John Paulson, two of last year’s best-performing hedge-fund managers, are predicting that stocks will continue their rally in 2014 even as the bull market approaches its sixth year. They’re among a number of top money managers betting markets are robust enough to weather a gradual reduction in the pace of the Federal Reserve’s asset purchases as the central bank signaled it will keep interest rates at their current low for the foreseeable future, according to interviews with more than half a dozen investors…
Global Hedge Fund Giant Sells UK’s TDX (HedgeCo)
The $10.5 billion global hedge fund investor, Investcorp, is selling the UK’s largest debt placement services and debt management platform company, TDX, to Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX), a global information solutions provider, for £200 million ($327 million). Through its technology fund, Investcorp Technology Partners III, Investcorp acquired a substantial minority stake in TDX in 2008, becoming the largest and only institutional shareholder alongside TDX’s three founders. “With our support, TDX has been able to realise its potential and has evolved from being a UK-focused operation to one with a growing international footprint.
Goldman Sachs Alumni Said to Open Japan Hedge Fund by March (SFGate)
Golvis Investment Pte, founded by three former Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) managing directors, plans to open its Japan-focused multistrategy hedge fund to investors this quarter, said two people with knowledge of the matter. Golvis Asia Opportunities Fund returned almost 2 percent in the first two weeks of January, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. It started trading early this month with money from the Singapore-based company’s founding partners and employees. Ryan Collins, Golvis’s head of business development, declined to comment on the fund as it is private.
Shorts set to pounce as U.S. stocks seen pricey (TheGlobeAndMail)
After years of hiding under their desks, short sellers are re-emerging – slowly. Investors who make a living betting that stock prices will fall are happy to forget 2013: The S&P 500 gained nearly 30 per cent while Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS)’s index of hedge funds with a dedicated short bias lost 25 per cent. …Jim Chanos, president and founder of Kynikos Associates and one of the most prominent short sellers, said the market is primed for people like him and as a result he has gone out to raise capital. “Now I think is not a bad time to be raising capital for what we do. When we got a rough going in the mid-90s, that was exactly the time to raise capital,” Chanos said, adding it was better to do this when critics viewed him as “like the village idiot and not an evil genius.”
Hedge fund flow forecast to hit pre-crisis peak (AsianInvestor)
Institutional investor flows into hedge funds globally are set to hit highs not seen since before the global financial crisis, according to a survey of asset owners. It comes as the survey from Barclays Capital Solutions Group found that among regional institutions, Asian pensions led the pack when it came to hedge fund allocations in 2013, investing $108 billion throughout the year. Private banks followed at $105 billion. Looking ahead, hedge funds are forecast to receive institutional flows of $80 billion in 2014, the highest level since 2007, marking a rebound for an industry that has been “under a bit of a cloud” since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, the survey finds.
UniCredit hands off risk to US fund Mariner Investment Group (FT)
A New York hedge fund group has persuaded US pension funds to take on some of the risk of lending to Italian infrastructure projects, in what it says could be a model for bringing new capital into the European economy. UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank by assets, will announce on Wednesday that it has done a deal with Mariner Investment Group to offload some of the default risk on a €910m portfolio of lending to energy and transport projects. The deal frees up capital that the bank would otherwise have to hold against the loans.
Regulation: Firms are closing funds (CNBC)
Activist Fund Corvex Taps Biglaw For New Top Lawyer (WSJ)
Activist hedge fund Corvex Management LP has a new top lawyer, hiring for its own a long-time adviser to activist investors. Corvex, run by former Icahn Enterprises LP (NASDAQ:IEP) -2.64% executive Keith Meister, has hired Patrick Dooley from law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP to be its general counsel, according to people familiar with the matter. Mr. Dooley starts his new job Tuesday and will be Corvex’s first in-house counsel, some of the people said. Mr. Dooley, age 58, spent 19 years at Akin Gump, where he focused on investments and acquisitions by private-equity firms and hedge funds, including activists.
A former hedge fund trader says Wall Street is like ‘The Wire’ (BizJournals)
Making money on Wall Street is just as addictive as taking drugs. That’s the argument former hedge fund trader Sam Polk makes in a New York Times essay. Polk, who left his job in 2010, says the rush of hauling in multimillion-dollar bonuses was like chasing after drugs in the streets of Baltimore. Polk writes: “Ever see what a drug addict is like when he’s used up his junk? He’ll do anything — walk 20 miles in the snow, rob a grandma — to get a fix. Wall Street was like that. In the months before bonuses were handed out, the trading floor started to feel like a neighborhood in ‘The Wire’ when the heroin runs out.”
Hedge fund Elliott raises Celesio stake to 24.08 percent (Reuters)
Activist investor Elliott Management Corp has raised its stake in German drug distributor Celesio and now controls shares equivalent to 24.08 percent of voting rights, regulatory filings to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Monday showed. New York-based hedge fund Elliott, which previously controlled shares with less than 20 percent voting rights, declined to comment. Earlier this month Reuters reported market talk that Elliott was adding to its stake after the failure of an $8.4-billion Celesio bid from McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK).
Hedge fund TCI cuts stake in Royal Mail (Telegraph)
Chris Hohn, the boss of TCI, has cut his holding in Royal Mail three months after building it, apparently confirming Vince Cable’s fears that hedge funds would not be long-term holders of the company. In a regulatory statement, TCI said it had reduced its stake in Royal Mail from 5.8pc to 4.58pc. The sale, which cuts the value of TCI’s investment by £74m, suggests that the hedge fund believes that Royal Mail shares are at the top of their valuation. Shares in the newly privatised delivery company closed last night at 600p, near its record high and more than 80pc above its float price of 330p. Labour ministers have said the Government “botched” the sale of Royal Mail and short-changed the taxpayer of billions of pounds by selling it too cheaply.
Mayfair’s billionaire hedge fund bosses are procrastinators just like the rest of us (CityAM)
Call it procrastination, call it the post-Christmas pile of paper work, but most hedge funds and private equity groups still haven’t submitted their application to operate under new EU regulations coming into force this year, research shows. With less than six months to go until the new laws come into force, over 80 per cent of fund managers still haven’t applied to be authorised under the new rules, called the alternative investment fund managers directive (catchy title, right?) The figures, uncovered by BNY Mellon, show four in ten managers plan to apply for authorisation before the end of March. A further 20 per cent said they’d leave it right up until deadline, which falls on 22 July.
Face it City boys, here’s why women make better hedge fund managers than men (Telegraph)
What does a hedge fund manager, or “hedgie” to those in the know, look like? Unlike the investment banking species, the hedgie is not a sociable creature. Little is revealed about who they are, what they look like, or indeed how much they make for themselves and their clients. There are a couple of notable exceptions; George Soros who is known for making $1 billion (£610 million) in a DAY by betting against the pound back on Black Wednesday 1992, and there’s Arki Busson, who is really known for being the Magritte-like moneyed suit behind then Elle McPherson and now Uma Thurman. Whatever little we know, most of us assume that those who inhabit this mysterious world of long and short trading are men.
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