Managers
October saw hedge funds delivering returns close to 2 per cent on the back of a renewed sense of market optimism. Event-Driven and Global Macro strategies outperformed, up 2.5 and 3 per cent respectively. CTAs, which were up 2.7 per cent last week, underperformed for the full month of October as they failed to capture the market rebound.
Fund performance and industry dry powder is analysed in this extract from the Preqin Quarterly Update: Private Debt, Q3 2015.
Fig 1 displays the median proportions of committed capital called up by the end of the first and second investment years, among all private debt funds for vintage years 2006-2014. It shows that post-2008, the median proportion of capital called up during the first two years of investment is lower than before the financial crisis. This could be explained by recent fundraising success pushing up dry powder levels at a faster rate than available deals in a competitive marketplace.
Preqin’s Real Estate Online currently tracks 62 South Korea-based institutions that are actively investing in the real estate asset class, collectively representing USD2.5 trillion in total assets.
A large proportion of South Korea-based real estate investors are insurance companies (31 per cent) and banks or investment banks (27 per cent), with public pension funds (18 per cent) and asset managers (10 per cent) also making up notable proportions of the investor pool. With 85 per cent of the real estate investor population comprising these traditionally large institutions, it is unsurprising that nearly half hold more than USD15 billion in assets
Colt has launched Colt PrizmNet in the US, connecting providers of financial content – including market data, research and trading services – to capital markets firms, improving trade execution and accelerating global market connectivity.
This financial extranet addresses increased client demand for greater transparency and reliable access to new and existing markets, as well as the move to fully electronic traded asset classes including swaps, FX and fixed income.
Colt is a private company owned by Fidelity, and operates across Europe, Asia and North America. The launch of Colt PrizmNet in the US supports its growing presence in North
Markit has launched Markit WSO Credit Manager, a credit and portfolio analysis application for investment professionals focused on bank loans. Credit Manager was designed in partnership with CVC Credit Partners and other industry experts.
The application helps portfolio managers and credit analysts make investment decisions by centralising the data they need to select investments, monitor credit performance and identify risk.
Credit Manager streamlines credit selection with screening functions that filter investment opportunities based on technical and fundamental criteria. The system alerts users about changes to portfolio holdings and provides collaboration tools to help investment teams coordinate their response if action
Virtus, a provider of tailored fixed-income services, has launched Virtus Trade Settlement (VTS), which delivers unprecedented settlement times for primary/secondary trades in the four trillion dollar loan market.
The launch of VTS follows on the acquisition of Trade Settlement Inc.
Virtus is launching VTS to meet a dramatic need in the market for efficient loan trade settlements, most evidently shown through the reduction of settlement times. VTS represents the powerful combination of Virtus’ advanced technology and TSI’s unique loan settlement capabilities. VTS provides market participants with unprecedented settlement times through speed and efficiency in settling primary/secondary trades. VTS delivers
With the starting line for implementation only two months away, Justin Hayes, product manager at Linedata, says fund administrators and investment managers need to get to grips with the OECD’s Common Reporting Standards, dubbed ‘Global FATCA’, before it’s too late.
“Financial institutions in early adopter jurisdictions, including the UK, Ireland, France and Germany, now have just two months until they will need to implement the OECD’s Common Reporting Standards (CRS). Fund administrators and investment managers must waste no time in putting in place procedures required to meet the burdensome new global rules around the exchange of tax information.
“Early preparation
BCS Financial Group, the largest broker of securities on the Moscow Exchange, has overcome challenging market conditions in Russia in the first six months of the year to achieve significant growth compared to the first half of 2014.
Despite a difficult year for Russian equity markets, with lower volumes and falling equity valuations, BCS, which is independently owned, has increased both revenue and profit – vastly outperforming both the Russian market and competing firms.
The results come on the back of the company’s first move into the American market with the strategic acquisition of Alforma Capital Markets Inc, the
Liquidnet saw record third quarter performance in Europe as institutional investors increasingly searched for size and improved execution quality, ahead of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) rules taking effect in January 2017.
These rules are expected to bring about tougher best execution requirements and caps on trading within dark pools.
In Q3 2015, average execution size was USD1.5 million. Total principal traded climbed to USD34.7 billion, up 18.98 per cent year-over-year (YoY), with continued strong growth coming from Continental European members up 41 per cent to USD2.8 billion total principal traded YoY.
“More and more
Start-ups in ASEAN are drawing increasing attention from venture capital firms and several countries have put in place measures to encourage such activities. The appetite for venture capital investments has seen a growth in both the number of deals and aggregate value transacted between 2014 and 2015 YTD. On the other hand, buyout activity has yet to match the peak seen in 2014.
In 2014-2015 YTD, there were 401 venture capital deals completed in ASEAN, totalling USD2.2 billion in aggregate value. When looking at buyout activities in the same timeframe, a total of 81 private equity-backed buyout deals were transacted
