Managers
Following last month’s banking sector woes prompted by the demise of SVB, Signature Bank and Credit Suisse, Paul Marshall, founder of hedge fund Marshall Wace, has warned investors that commercial real estate could be the next sector to experience market jitters, according to a report by Bloomberg.
In letter to investors seen by Bloomberg, Wace highlighted that while the collapse of SVB was swiftly contained, lenders have gone into “self preservation mode” and that lending in general will now be even harder to access in a “zombified banking system”. According to Marshall, commercial real estate is under particular strain from
Ray Dalio, founder of hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates, is to open a branch of his family office in Abu Dhabi as part of the wider expansion of his operations in the Middle East, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in particular, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Several hedge funds have recently made changes to their positions in the Japan Smaller Capitalisation Fund, with the fund seeing overall growth in short interest during March to 11,800 shares at the end of the month, an increase of 26.9% from the 15 March total of 9,300 shares.
DE Shaw is the latest hedge fund major to announce an expansion in India with the opening of two new offices in the cities of Bengaluru and Gurugram, which will be home to around 300 additional employees in total.
Chinese quantitative hedge fund manager High-Flyer Quant has scotched rumours it is intending to sack its fund managers and replace them with an artificial general intelligence-based stock trading system, according to a report by Yicai Global.
London-based hedge fund Covalis Capital has proposed a rival list of board candidates to those put forward by the Italian government last week for state-owned renewable energy company Enel, according to a report by Reuters.
The report cites a statement made by Covalis claiming that the system that led to the government’s nominations “undermines investor confidence, erodes value and is out of line with international standards of best practice in shareholder democracy.”
The Italian government’s proposals include replacing long-serving CEO Francesco Starace, with Flavio Cattaneo, who currently serves as executive vice president of high-speed train operator Italo, and appointing former
London-based activist hedge fund Bluebell Capital Partners has criticised Glencore for “a lack of strategic thinking” as it campaigns for the mining conglomerate to spin-off its thermal coal business, according to a story by the Financial Review.
In a letter to Glencore’s board, Bluebell said that “shareholders, us included, would be reasonable in their criticism of this short-sightedness, complacency, and lack of strategic thinking for not spinning off thermal coal in a timely manner”.
Bluebell Capital believes Glencore has wasted 18 months arguing about the proposal before capitulating as part of a takeover of Teck Resources.
Bluebell Capital is a
West coast activist hedge fund Phase 2 Partners is targeting UK-listed asset manager Jupiter Fund Management, according to a report by The Times. Financial Conduct Authority disclosure data shows the San Francisco-based hedge fund is now a leading short-seller of Jupiter.
The US group has built a net short position of 0.59 per cent in shares of the London-listed asset manager.
Phase 2 is one of three hedge funds that have built short bets against Jupiter that are larger than the 0.5 per cent threshold required for investors to disclose their positions to the regulator.
Phase 2’s negative wager comes as
High-profile hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has halved his bearish position in Metro Bank since December, but remains the lender’s largest short-seller, according to a report by the Mail on Sunday.
Odey’s fund has held a negative wager in Metro Bank for a number of years, but the company now holds a “relatively unimportant” position in the portfolio, due to a low price and lack of liquidity in its shares, Odey told the Mail on Sunday.
Odey – whose holding now amounts to about 2 per cent of the shares available, worth almost £4 million – remains Metro’s largest short-seller.
US-based multi-strategy managers dominate a new ranking of 64 investment firms managing $10 billion or more in hedge fund assets.
Four of the top ten firms on the inaugural ‘$10bn+ Power List’ from Alternative Fund Insight (AFI) specialise in multi-strategy hedge fund vehicles, including Miami-headquartered Citadel and New York-based Millennium Management.
Collectively, the wider group of 64 firms manages $1.75 trillion, around 44% of the hedge fund industry’s $4 trillion total AUM.
The AFI ranking, based on reporting and publicly available data and as of the start of 2023, is topped by Westport, Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates – retaining its long-held
