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Hedge fund manager BlueMountain Capital Management has held the final close of the BlueMountain Summit Opportunities Fund II, the firm’s most recent multi-asset class opportunity fund, at USD1.3 billion in committed capital.
Summit Fund II has already begun deploying capital into high conviction investments across multiple asset classes including public corporate credit and equity, mortgage and asset-backed securities, real estate and private debt and equity. Investments focus on positions with excess risk premium associated with lower liquidity and heightened complexity. The Fund’s broad, flexible and long-term investment mandate allows BlueMountain to pursue opportunities across continuously evolving markets in both short-term trading
The Countess of Wessex (pictured) is to serve as Global Ambassador of 100 Women in Hedge Funds (100WHF) Next Generation initiatives.
Launched in January 2015, the goal of 100WHF’s most recent initiative is to inspire, mentor and provide access and peer network support to young women looking to start their careers in finance and investments.
The Countess of Wessex will attend several events in New York to launch her new role, including the 100WHF 500th education event on 10 November, a Next Gen breakfast discussion on November 11th with young women currently in the industry, and a New York
As Europe’s private debt market continues to evolve, those managers well placed to offer direct lending strategies could benefit substantially as insurance companies, in particular, seek alternative yield-enhancing funds within their credit portfolios. Not only do direct lending strategies provide stable, consistent returns over a multi-year time horizon, they also allow insurers to make more efficient use of their Solvency Capital Ratio (SCR) under Solvency II regulation.
The capital charge is estimated to be 20 per cent. Factor in that these are private closed-ended investments, offering insulation from market volatility, and suddenly one begins to understand why direct lending is
The Quaker Event Arbitrage Fund has joined Provasi Capital Partners’ investment platform. The Fund – a multi-strategy event-driven mutual fund – is focused on long-term growth of capital that invests in securities of issuers that are experiencing corporate events.
"We are very pleased to welcome the Quaker Event Arbitrage Fund to our platform and provide financial advisors with access to an event-driven strategy," says Frank Muller (pictured), CEO and President of Provasi Capital Partners. "By tactically allocating within different sub-strategies, the Fund is able to offer investors enhanced levels of diversification and seeks to mitigate risk."
Event-driven investing focuses
AlphaClone has launched of the AlphaClone International Downside Hedged Index, which is designed to give investors access to the investment ideas of the world’s most established hedge funds, while simultaneously hedging against protracted market downturns.
The index follows the same proprietary Clone Score methodology used by AlphaClone’s flagship AlphaClone Hedge Fund Downside Hedged Index, which has approximately USD170 million in assets currently tracking the index, and has returned an average of 14.35 per cent per year versus 12.40 per cent for the S&P 500 Total Return Index over the three-year period ending 9/30/2015.
Earlier in the year, the firm
The National Futures Association (NFA) has permanently barred commodity pool operator and commodity trading advisor Nord Capital Advisors and the firm’s principal Yakov Shlyapochnik, from membership.
In addition, Nord Capital and Shlyapochnik are both barred from acting as principals of an NFA Member and must pay a USD300,000 fine.
The Decision, issued by NFA's Business Conduct Committee (BCC), is based on a Complaint authorised by the BCC and a settlement offer submitted by Nord Capital and Shlyapochnik.
The Complaint charged Nord Capital and Shlyapochnik with a failure to cooperate by refusing to provide NFA with books and records
Black Mountain’s Direct Lending Solutions are now offered via Software as a Service (SaaS). The firm’s clients include investment managers, credit funds, hedge funds, private equity firms, direct lenders and banks.
"We are excited to bring our leading best practice solutions to more clients with this new offering," says Kevin MacDonald, co-CEO of Black Mountain. "In addition to the deployment speed and cost benefits of the SaaS model, users will have access to new features and enhancements for Direct Lending as they become available."
The new offering comes pre-configured with industry best practices which allow users to manage all
Risk solutions provider NetOTC has launched NetOTC Bilateral, an end-to-end bilateral market infrastructure for the margining of non-cleared OTC derivatives.
NetOTC Bilateral is connecting to Euroclear’s Collateral Highway in an effort to answer the market demand for greater transparency, resilience and addressing the market need for funding, capital and operational cost efficiencies.
From September 2016, the mandatory exchange of Initial Margin (IM) comes into effect. NetOTC Bilateral is a sophisticated IM solution that goes beyond the calculation and calling of standard two-way margining.
NetOTC Bilateral is offered as a dedicated service that works with existing service providers. Robust collateral segregation,
Average daily volume (ADV) at the CBOE Futures Exchange (CFE) was down 28 per cent from September 2015 and 44 per cent from October 2014's record-setting volume totals.
However, on a year-to-date basis through October, volume was up 2 per cent, compared with the same period last year.
Total volume in futures on the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX Index) for October was 4.0 million contracts, down 24 per cent from September 2015 and down 46 per cent from October 2014, when VIX Index futures set monthly and daily volume records. October VIX futures' ADV was 181,562 contracts.
Exchange-wide ADV at
Digital Realty Trust is partnering with Aqua Comms Limited to deploy its new transatlantic fibre optic system, America Europe Connect (AEConnect).
Spanning more than 5,400 kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean, between Long Island and the west coast of Ireland, with stubbed branching units for future landings, AEConnect is currently expected to be available in Digital Realty’s data centre at 32 Avenue of the Americas by the end of 2015, and the company plans to expand availability to its two other New York facilities at 111 8th Avenue and 60 Hudson Street as well. The subsea cable features the latest technology of
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