Och-Ziff Assets Fell $3.6 Billion in December After Deal (Bloomberg)
Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, the hedge fund that settled a federal bribery probe in September, said assets declined by about $3.6 billion in December, even as its biggest multi-strategy fund made money in the month. The firm managed about $33.5 billion as of Jan. 1, according to a regulatory filing Wednesday, down from $45.5 billion at the end of 2015. Founder Dan Och is seeking to repair the damage after settling the bribery case last year with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Justice Department. An Och-Ziff unit pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a plot to pay bribes to win investments in Africa.
Oil Trader Pierre Andurand’s Hedge Fund Returned 22% In 2016 (Forbes)
With the price of crude oil sinking below $30 a barrel to 12-year lows a year ago, oil trader Pierre Andurand turned bullish, believing oil prices were set to rebound. Andurand waited for bearish sentiment to subside and went long oil for periods of 2016, driving one of the hedge fund industry’s best returns. Andurand’s London-based hedge fund, Andurand Capital Management, returned 22% in 2016, according to a person familiar with the matter, trouncing the average hedge fund manager. Indeed, in a year when the hedge fund industry continued to struggle mightily, an emerging theme is that a few well-performing hedge funds outperformed by catching the upswing of oil, which now trades for $55 a barrel. Billionaire Michael Hintze’s CQS hedge fund returned 30.2% in the first 11 months of 2016, largely by investing in the debt of oil and coal producers.
No One Questioned This Hedge Fund’s Madoff-Like Returns (Bloomberg)
In the years before Mark Nordlicht was arrested for what’s alleged to be one of the biggest investment frauds since Bernie Madoff’s, U.S. authorities had plenty of reasons to suspect something might have been fishy about his hedge fund, Platinum Partners. As far back as 2007, Bank of Montreal accused Nordlicht of helping a rogue trader, costing it more than $500 million. Three years later, when the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating what it called a “scheme to profit from the imminent deaths of terminally ill patients,” the agency discovered that Platinum had funded the deals. And in 2011, a Florida lawyer who confessed to running a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme testified that Nordlicht, his biggest funder, lied to help him lure new investors.
Kyle Bass: ‘Global Markets Are At The Beginning Of A Tectonic Shift’ (Yahoo Finance)
Texan hedge fund manager J. Kyle Bass, the founder of Hayman Capital, says that global markets are at the “beginning of a tectonic shift.” “Today, global markets are at the beginning of a tectonic shift from deflationary expectations to reflationary expectations. What happens to economies at maximum leverage when interest rates begin to rise? Reconciling the potent strengths of the world’s largest economies with their inherent weaknesses has revealed various investable anomalies. The enormity of the apparent disequilibrium is breathtaking, making today a tremendous time to invest,” Bass wrote in a year-end letter to investors seen by Yahoo Finance. He added: “One opportunity in particular has the greatest risk-reward profile we have ever encountered in our decade of being a fiduciary.”
