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Concept Capital Markets, LLC joins Hedge Fund Association’s Global Thought Leadership Council… Mayur Hedge Fund returns 49 per cent over first half of 2014 …

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The Hedge Fund Association ("HFA"), announced today the addition of prominent prime brokerage firm Concept Capital Markets, LLC to its Thought Leadership Council.

Concept Capital Markets joins fellow council members McGladrey and KPMG to empower the HFA’s mission to advance transparency, development and trust in alternative investments.

“We are proud to join the HFA’s Thought Leadership Council in support of the organization’s mission to unite and speak up for all hedge fund industry participants,” said Jack Seibald, Managing Member of Concept Capital Markets, LLC. “As the HFA continues to grow its regional chapters in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Australia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Concept Capital Markets will work alongside our fellow HFA leaders to support industry best practices, and to help educate the public, media and lawmakers about, and advocate for, the global alternative investment industry.”

“The HFA serves its members by producing top-level member networking and educational events, working to educate lawmakers and regulators, and being a strong voice for the advancement of the entire hedge fund industry,” said HFA president Mitch Ackles. “We are honored that Concept Capital Markets has chosen to support our mission to help foster new opportunities for HFA members worldwide.”

Concept Capital Markets, LLC offers a comprehensive suite of brokerage and related services that provide traditional and alternative investment managers with solutions that are customizable and scalable. The firm was built by former investment managers to serve hedge fund managers, managed account platforms, institutional investors, family offices, and registered investment advisers with turn-key solutions designed to free its clients to focus on their core competencies.

Global Investment House’s Mayur Hedge Fund, a long short absolute return growth oriented fund with a net long bias, has reported a 49 per cent return for the first six months ending 30 June 2014.

That return makes it the second best performing hedge fund for the Indian market as reported by EurekaHedge.

The Mayur Hedge Fund is an India-focused product managed directly by Global which aims to achieve capital appreciation through investing predominantly in equity and fixed income related instruments of Indian companies.
Rajesh George, vice president international asset management at Global, says: “The Asian, and in particular the Indian market offers a compelling investment opportunity. The investment case for India is powerful; the country – which is home to a quarter of the world’s population under the age of 25 has a positive demographic profile, an emerging middle class, good corporate governance and an economy that has a low reliance on foreign trade. The reforms expected to be implemented by the new Indian government is expected to boost the Indian GDP growth and also to create a very favorable environment for foreign investors.”
 

India is already the third largest economy in the world in terms of purchasing power parity and is projected to be approximately 30 per cent of the size of the US economy by 2025.
George says: “The Indian economy is normally negatively correlated to oil prices. Hence the Mayur Hedge Fund is considered an excellent investment product providing investors a hedge against any downward trend in Oil prices while capitalising on the very strong internal and external growth narrative set to drive the Indian economy for the foreseeable future.”
 
The fund employs a bottom-up and fundamental approach. It invests in equities of well-managed, high quality companies that have the potential to grow at a robust rate.

The New York Times reports that a Hong Kong hedge fund manager who rallied support from bankers and brokers for the city’s pro-democracy movement said Tuesday that a leading business newspaper had dropped his long-running column.

The hedge fund manager, Edward C K Chin, revealed the decision by The Hong Kong Economic Journal two days after the Chinese government roundly rejected the movement’s demands. He and his supporters said the action was the latest blow to Hong Kong’s beleaguered media freedoms, a criticism the paper rejected. The dispute was another sign of raw tempers in Hong Kong, where politics, business and the news media have increasingly felt the gravitational pull of Beijing.

Chin has been one of the financial sector’s prominent supporters of the movement, Occupy Central With Love and Peace. The group said Sunday that it would stage peaceful protests in Central, the financial heart of Hong Kong, after China proposed electoral changes for the city that would doom activists’ demands for democracy.

Chin had used his weekly column in The Economic Journal, a Chinese-language broadsheet read by bankers and investors, to push for full-fledged democracy and to criticize China’s handling of Hong Kong. 

He said he was informed by email over the weekend that the paper would stop using his column, which he wrote for more than eight years, as part of a redesign of the business section, in which it appeared. He rejected that explanation and said that pressure from China, possibly indirect, appeared to lie behind his dismissal. “It’s a political decision,” he said to NY Times on Tuesday.

The Economic Journal denied that the move was politically motivated. “We respect the columnist’s freedom of expression, but media also have room for editorial autonomy,” a Journal spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

The statement said the decision to remove Chin’s column was part of an editorial redesign planned over two months that also affected other columnists. “This is something that papers do all the time,” it said.

The Economic Journal is owned by an offshore trust established by Richard Li, a Hong Kong businessman. Li is the son of the city’s, and Asia’s, richest man, Li Ka-shing, who has extensive investments in China

The Independent Commentators Association, a Hong Kong group that advocates media freedom and diversity, said The Economic Journal could not escape suspicion that political pressure from the mainland authorities and their Hong Kong allies had influenced its decision.

The dropping of Chin’s column comes as Occupy Central tries to sustain public commitment to its protest plans, while also trying to shift focus from the failed demands for electoral democracy to broader, long-term hopes of preserving Hong Kong’s freedoms and civil society.

Asian shares were mostly lower Thursday, as investors took a cautious approach ahead of statements from the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Hong Kong's Hang Seng was down 0.4 per cent after leaping to its highest close since May 2008 on Wednesday (Sept 3rd), while the Shanghai Composite Index was down 0.2 per cent, after its highest close since June 2013.

The Nikkei Stock Average was down 0.2 per cent and Australia's S&P/ASX200 was down 0.3 per cent.

A meeting by the European Central Bank on Thursday is expected to bring further details on the bank's plans to start asset purchases, a move that would work in favor of the dollar's strength. But major Asian bourses were weaker given a lack of strong cues from a mixed finished by U.S. stocks overnight.

The appointment of a new head for the nation's USD1.2 trillion public pension fund has been boosting stocks in Japan, with local investors expecting the fund to invest more in the domestic market. That has helped the Nikkei up more than 6 per cent since its recent bottom on 8 Aug.

Elsewhere in the region, South Korea's Kospi was up 0.3 per cent and Singapore's Strait Times was down 0.2 per cent.

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