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Jason Allison has joined Walkers’ Cayman Islands office as a partner in the global investment funds group.
Allison, an offshore investment funds practitioners, has close to ten years' experience advising on Cayman Islands law.
After spending over five years at Freshfields in London, he commenced his Cayman Islands career with Maples and Calder in 2004, becoming a partner there in 2007. In 2012, Allison left Maples and Calder to help establish the Cayman Islands office of another international offshore law firm.
Allison advises on Cayman Islands corporate and investment funds law, with particular expertise advising institutional clients on
Age appears to be a greater factor in relative hedge fund performance than size, according to a report by eVestment.
The report, Impact of Size and Age on Hedge Fund Performance: 2003 – 2013, says the hedge fund industry is maturing and composition is evolving as institutional investors have become the dominant investor.
The percentage of large funds older than five years is at a peak and new funds are launching larger and growing more quickly. The representation of mid-sized funds under two years old has increased from between five per cent to six per cent pre-financial crisis, to
TCA Fund Management Group is planning to float the TCA Global Credit Fund through an AIM IPO as a new London listed, closed-end investment company.
The IPO will be structured as a feeder fund and aims to raise USD25m, marketed at both institutional and retail investors.
The fund, which is a short duration, absolute return fund specialising in short term senior secured lending to SMEs, is targeting a six to eight per cent annual dividend payment to shareholders on a quarterly basis (two per cent per quarter).
The Master Fund has a solid four year track record, exceeding
DW Investment Management (DWIM), a USD6bn global multi-strategy credit management firm, has appointed Joel Biran and John Buck, former managing directors at Versa Capital, to the firm's distressed corporate team.
Biran and Buck represent senior additions to DWIM's existing team and bring expertise in rescue finance, middle market lending, turnarounds and other operationally intensive workout and distressed-for-control situations.
The new additions will focus on expanding DWIM's stressed and distressed corporate credit efforts, with an emphasis on investments in distressed and underperforming middle market companies.
"Joel and John have a breadth and depth of experience originating, structuring, and
US-dollar, euro and sterling prime money market funds (MMFs) have increased their sensitivity to interest rates in the first two months of 2014, meaning their stressed net asset values have deteriorated, according to Moody’s.
In US domiciled funds, aggregate exposure to European financial institutions rose to approximately 31 per cent of total investments at the end of February from 25 per cent at year-end 2013.
Some of this increase came while reducing exposures to Australian and Japanese financial institutions, whose share of invested assets declined to 16.5 per cent from 18 per cent.
Partially due to the higher
Institutional investors view activism as a successful tool used among hedge fund managers to increase returns and stimulate growth in their investments, according to a survey by Novus.
"With institutional investors under increasing pressure to add value and deliver returns, we're not surprised to see unconventional investment strategies like activism growing in popularity and a great uptick in allocators willing to employ them," says Basil Qunibi, CEO and founder of Novus, a portfolio intelligence and analytics company based in New York.
The survey found that the majority of experts (78 per cent) believe activism drives shareholder value.
Nearly
Adam Sussman has joined Liquidnet as head of market structure and liquidity partnerships.
In this global role, Sussman (pictured) will serve as a senior advisor on market structure issues providing insight and guidance on industry developments, technological trends and financial industry dynamics to Liquidnet’s community of buy side members and customers.
He will also advance Liquidnet’s efforts in identifying new ways to bring in additional sources of unique, safe and actionable block liquidity by building and strengthening partnerships with a broad spectrum of industry participants.
Sussman will be based in New York, reporting to Liquidnet’s head of US equities
Hedge funds received USD24.3bn (1.1 per cent of assets) in February, the highest monthly inflow in three years, building on an inflow of USD4.4bn (0.2 per cent of assets) in January, according to BarclayHedge and TrimTabs.
“The hedge fund industry raked in USD28.7bn in January and February, an 83 per cent jump from USD15.7bn in the same period last year,” says Sol Waksman, president and founder of BarclayHedge.
Industry assets climbed to a five and a half year high of USD2.2trn in February, according to estimates based on data from 3,374 funds. Assets rose 18 per cent in the
FTSE TMX Global Debt Capital Markets has acquired the indices business of MTS, whose indices track the performance of the largest and most widely traded government issued securities in European bonds.
MTS is an electronic fixed income trading markets and is majority owned by London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).
FTSE TMX Global Debt Capital Markets is a joint venture between FTSE Group and TMX Group’s information services division, TMX Datalinx.
As a result of the acquisition, MTS will initially hold a 3.1 per cent stake in FTSE TMX Global Debt Capital Markets. FTSE will retain a 72.7 per
AIMA CEO Andrew Baker recently commented that the complicated nature of AIFMD, the different interpretations of EU Member States and variety of approaches from third countries meant that fund managers are facing complex choices. Here, Fiona Le Poidevin (pictured), Chief Executive of Guernsey Finance, explores what a third country can offer asset managers under AIFMD.
Andrew Baker, CEO of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) – launching an AIFMD implementation guide jointly with PwC, said: “AIFMD is a complicated piece of legislation. It is being implemented in EU Member States in a variety of different ways, while non-EU or ‘third
