Dishonesty Led to $600 Million Hedge Fund End: Prosecutor (BusinessWeek)
Weavering Capital (UK) Ltd. founder Magnus Peterson’s deliberate “dishonesty” caused the collapse of his $600 million hedge fund, U.K. prosecutors told a London court on the trial’s opening day. Peterson told investors he was following a low-risk strategy, but within a few days of its start the fund had lost more than 20 percent of its value, according to Amanda Pinto, a lawyer for the Serious Fraud Office. Rather than stopping, he changed the strategy and lied to investors, she said, disputing that it was due to “bad luck or incompetence.”
Walsh Joins TMF Custom House As COO (Finalternatives)
Hedge fund administrator TMF Custom House Fund Services has named Kevin Walsh chief operating officer for fund services. Walsh, who will be based in Dublin, started his career in the funds industry in 1995 at the Bank of Bermuda and has a strong operational, regulatory and product management focus and experience in banking and fund services. He joins TMF Custom House from HSBC Securities Services (which acquired Bank of Bermuda in 2004), where he was responsible for the global product development of core accounting services across the range of alternative asset classes.
Call for position-level data to monitor hedge fund risk (Risk)
UK financial regulators do not have access to the most accurate hedge fund statistics, according to financial academics, echoing concerns from a series of Bank of England officials and reports that data collected on hedge funds gives regulators a “limited” and “incomplete” picture of the systemic risk they pose. Last year the Bank’s governor Mark Carney complained to the UK Parliament’s Treasury Committee that the quality of fund flow data for the hedge fund industry “fall[s] short of our need for greater coverage of financial sub-sectors”.
Sears Apologizes After Swastika Ring Appears on Marketplace Site (BusinessWeek)
Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ:SHLD), the department-store chain run by hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert, apologized after a ring with a swastika symbol appeared on the company’s online Marketplace site. “We are outraged that more than one of our independent third-party sellers posted offensive items on Sears Marketplace,” the company said today in a statement, which linked to a newspaper story about the swastika ring. Sears said it removed the product yesterday.
Darden gets new management; no salted pasta water yet (Reuters)
Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) on Tuesday announced new leadership following a board coup by activist investor Starboard Value LP, whose recipe for fixing the company’s ailing Olive Garden chain included salting pasta water, doling out fewer free breadsticks and pushing more wine. …Starboard is Darden’s second-largest investor, with an 8.8 percent stake. The New York hedge fund is agitating for change at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and attempting to take RealD (NYSE:RLD) private.
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