Funds
By Donald A Steinbrugge, CFA – Managing Partner, Agecroft Partners – It is no secret that the hedge fund industry is viewed negatively by a large portion of the general public, but should it be?
Such a perception is driven primarily by the fact that most hedge funds are not permitted to market themselves to the general public, and because the mainstream media has a negative bias toward their coverage of the industry. The average person is inundated with negative articles creating the image that: 1.) Most hedge fund managers are dishonest and frequently commit fraud or violate insider
FD has acquired ActivateClients Limited, in a deal worth EUR4.75m (GBP3.4m), of which EUR1.5m (GBP1.1m) is payable in cash and EUR3.25m (GBP2.4m) is payable through the issue of 183,185 FD new ordinary shares.
The earnings enhancing acquisition provides complementary software products, particularly HTML5 capabilities, that are expected to enhance the FD’s software platform.
The vendors of ActivateClients include Pat Brazel and Keith MacDonald, who are Non-Executive Directors of FD. Following the acquisition Brazel, who is Chief Executive Officer of ActivateClients, has been appointed Global Head of Software Sales for FD and will step down from the Board of the
Calastone has added the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) Global Asset Management to its global order routing community.
NBAD was Abu Dhabi’s first local bank and played a pioneering role in building the country’s financial system. Today, NBAD has one of the largest networks of branches and offices domestically in the UAE, and international offices in 18 countries.
Calastone has been successfully serving its fund manager, distributor, platform, custodian and fund administration clients since it launched in 2008. Today, more than 760 clients in 22 domiciles around the world are connected to its global transaction network. This announcement
Hotspot, an institutional foreign exchange (FX) market owned and operated by BATS Global Markets, is expanding its European presence with the launch of its first Europe-based FX matching engine.
BATS President Chris Concannon said, “This project is important for our current – and future – customers as it gives BATS a larger footprint in the leading trading centre in the FX world. As home to more than 50% of currency trading globally*, and growing, the European market is a top priority for the Hotspot team.
“BATS already operates Europe’s largest equities exchange and we have similar ambitions for Hotspot
The private debt industry has more than tripled in size since 2006, with assets under management (AUM) increasing from USD152bn to USD465bn as of June 2014. Ryan Flanders, Executive Editor of the newly released 2015 Preqin Global Private Debt Report, examines the growth of the asset class.
The global private debt market, also referred to as the alternative or non-bank lending industry, is fast approaching USD500bn in AUM. The industry has seen steady growth over recent years, spurred on by the growing opportunity of providing private companies with debt financing in the face of bank regulation. One of the
Highland Capital Management has launched Highland Alternative Investors, an alternative investment platform that will encompass all of Highland’s existing non-traditional, liquid alternative funds.
Michael Gregory will oversee the new platform as Global Head and CIO of Highland Alternative Investors.
“Highland has been offering investors access to liquid alternative solutions for over a decade,” says Mark Okada, co-Founder & CIO of Highland Capital Management. “The introduction of this platform will further strengthen our offerings and ability to drive results as well as allow Highland to better offer customised solutions across portfolios to investors.”
In addition to his new role, Michael Gregory
AlphaPipe has launched Form ADV Change Reports a new service that delivers to investors a monthly change report of all changes made to an asset manager's Form ADV filing.
"Form ADV is publicly available and should be one of your first lines of defence in monitoring your asset managers," says West Chapman, AlphaPipe's CEO formerly of Goldman Sachs, where he served on the Liquid Markets Investment Committee, led the Risk team and built the Operational Due Diligence team within Goldman Sachs Asset Management's (GSAM) external manager businesses.
"Unfortunately, current access to Form ADV makes monitoring cumbersome to impossible. Our monthly
Hedge Funds have continued to deliver solid returns in 2015, with the Lyxor HFI up 1.3% last week and 3.4% year to date. The first quarter of 2015 is actually on track to be the best quarter for hedge funds since Q2-2007, when the Lyxor HFI was up 3.7%. At present, 85% of the funds included in our sample are positive year to date.
Coral Gables Asset Management has launched a new hedge fund, which employs a long-short trading strategy and seeks to exploit short-term and medium-term trading opportunities in the US equities market.
Dr Alok Kumar, Coral Gables Asset Management Chief Investment Officer, Gabelli Asset Management professor at University of Miami and leading researcher in behavioural finance, says: “We have a strong academic research background and have decided to go out on our own with cutting-edge proprietary quantitative investment models. We believe our models capture superior returns by systematically identifying cross-sectional investment opportunities that are often slowly aggregated by market participants.”
The fund
Cornerstone Global Commodities is pleased to announce that it has been joined by
Duncan Preston, formerly of Vitol, has joined Cornerstone Global Commodities. He will be be based in London before opening Cornerstone's Dubai office.
Preston has substantial experience of commodity markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with particular expertise in structuring finance solutions, joint ventures and investments in physical commodity businesses.
Brian Murphy, Founding Partner at Cornerstone, says: "Duncan's expertise and skills are a powerful addition to the abilities of this energetic brokerage firm, as it expands its offering from traditional introducing broker services to comprehensive consulting
