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Indian tech firm WandX, led by CEO Abhinav Ramesh (pictured), is to launch a token sale on Friday 27 October to fund the building of its new platform, which will allow investors to create and trade in derivative products based on crypto-assets.
Expectation around the token sale is high and a pre-sale raised 530 Ether (approximately USD150,000) in only 36 hours.
Ramesh, who has a background in supply-chain and analytics at Ernst & Young, says: “Until now, cryptocurrency investors have used decentralised exchanges to buy and sell different cryptocurrencies, in the hope of growing their assets. The difficulty that investors
Prophecy Asset Management, a New York-based allocator and seed capital source for equity long/short hedge fund managers, has allocated USD30 million to a portfolio created by Birch Island Capital, a private investment firm in Cambridge, MA founded by a team of current Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) students majoring in Economics, Finance and Computer Science.
Birch Island’s innovative equity investing strategy incorporates advanced methods of statistical machine learning combined with fundamental analysis applied to a scalable quantitative portfolio construction process.
“While scouting for innovative investment strategies, different trading methodologies and new launches, we were introduced by our Boston brokerage partner
ICE Futures Europe expects to launch a new one month, cash-settled futures contract based on the Sterling Overnight Index Average (SONIA) rate on 1 December, 2017.
“We are pleased to introduce SONIA futures to our Sterling interest rate portfolio alongside the highly liquid Short Sterling and Gilt futures markets,” says Stuart Williams (pictured), President, ICE Futures Europe. “We’ve seen significant growth in demand in both Sterling and Euro interest rate futures and options this year, and remain committed to developing innovative solutions that meet the needs of our customers.”
ICE offers a comprehensive range of European interest rate futures
Over the past decade the funds of hedge funds industry has seen a long-term decline in AUM, falling to USD798 billion in June 2017, as investors have become increasingly sophisticated and withdrawn capital in favour of investing directly themselves.
As industry assets have dwindled, the number of new funds of hedge funds entering the market has also fallen year-on-year, from a peak of 207 in 2007 to just 10 in the first half of 2017. In order to combat the challenging environment fund of hedge funds managers have increasingly turned to M&A activity among themselves in order to diversify product
Minerva Capital Management, the New York based Asset Manager, has launched a new fund, the Minerva Catalyst Strategies LP Fund.
Minerva is a deep value, bottoms-up, long-biased, hands-on activist fund. The founder and CEO Stanford Silverman (pictured), commented, “Minerva is aiming for exceptionally high risk-adjusted absolute returns, with targeted annual ROI portfolio performance north of 35 per cent.”
Silverman says: “Our team adds value by its unparalleled industry expertise, as well as Minerva’s frequently hands-on, value-enhancing involvement with the portfolio companies’ operations. Furthermore, we are at a significant investment inflection point for the industries Minerva targets, and, for which
Shilen Shah, Bond Strategist at Investec Wealth & Investment, comments on the ECB’s decision to slash its QE stimulus…
As expected, the ECB announced at its October press conference that it would further taper its bond buying programme from EUR60 billion a month to EUR30 billion a month from January 2018 to September 2018. Despite the announced reduction in stimulus, the Euro has weakened against the USD and is currently down 0.5 per cent on the day as the market tries to digest a gradual reduction is stimulus with the ECB’s open-ended commitment to extend the bond buying programme “beyond”
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has announced a 30-month period of ‘temporary relief’ from new European Union investment research rules due to be introduced under MiFID II on 3 January 2018.
The move, which comes following consultation with European authorities, is in response to concerns that the under new EU regulations, US investors could lose access to valuable research. Under MiFID II, brokers will have to charge separately for research services which, traditionally, have been bundled with trading fees. The EU’s aim is to provide investors with greater transparency and encourage brokers to produce better quality research.
The SEC
It is a trend that has steadily gathered momentum over the last five years and one that shows no sign of abating: namely that the big US hedge fund groups continue to get bigger and attract most of the institutional money.
From a structuring perspective, large managers are increasingly choosing to establish funds-of-one to meet the specific needs of US institutional investors.
“Under Cayman law we don’t have the managed account concept so a fund-of-one is the preferred structuring option for these managers,” explains Joanne Huckle (pictured), Partner, Investment Funds Team, Ogier (Cayman Islands). “Institutional investors are becoming more demanding
Circle Partners has been providing offshore and European onshore support for the last 17 years. The current focus of expansion is to support US managers by providing onshore fund administration services for the same.
“We look to partner with our clients and tailor our services as much as possible to meet their needs,” says Joy Crouse (pictured), Business Development Manager of Circle Partners. “We have an experienced, committed team and have a low turnover by industry standards. Our operations team in the US has been intact for nine years.”
Circle provides a comprehensive range of fund administration services to its clients
New research conducted by UMB Fund Services (UMB) in partnership with FUSE Research Network suggests that interval funds and tender offer funds – collectively referred to as unlisted `closed-end funds’ (CEFs) – are starting to show real momentum and growth in the marketplace. Not only that, but with no single asset manager (or concentrated group of managers) dominating the space, there is plenty of opportunity for new entrants eager to support the growing demand for non-correlated returns.
The research found that as of Q1 2017, there were 109 unlisted CEFs with total assets under management of approximately USD41.7 billion. Assets
