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Celebrated for its prestige, glamour, and exclusivity, fine wine represents a significant and intriguing opportunity for the medium to long term investor.
In November 2013 a case of 1978 Romanée-Conti was sold at auction in Hong Kong for $476,280, making those twelve bottles of Burgundy the most expensive case of wine ever sold. This was an exceptional event that made the news worldwide, a dramatic illustration of how the romance, heritage, and glamour attached to the great names of the wine world helps transform them into Veblen goods, whose high price increases rather than diminishes their desirability. Although spectacular, the
INDOS Financial Limited has received authorisation from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) as an Article 36 Custodian to provide AIFMD depositary-lite services to non-EU alternative investment funds.
INDOS is the first independent UK authorised depositary specialising in hedge funds.
Following the introduction of the AIFMD, many hedge fund managers are required to comply with the so-called ‘depositary-lite’ regime. Managers need to identify depositary providers such as INDOS in order to continue marketing their funds to EU investors after 22 July 2014.
Bill Prew, Founder and CEO of INDOS, says: “Being the first independent firm to obtain an Article 36
Ultimus Fund Solutions has launched a non exchange-traded closed-end fund service, allowing alternative investment managers access to the ERISA retirement plan market in a registered fund structure with fewer operational constraints than most typical retail fund offerings.
Financial Solutions Inc (FSI) is the first manager to leverage Ultimus’ closed-end fund offering.
Ultimus will provide FSI with the operational expertise and outsourcing services necessary to support its Low Beta Absolute Fund structure, including fund administration and accounting, fund compliance, and unitholder servicing and reporting.
While often underused, non exchange-traded CEFs are becoming recognised as the most flexible registered fund
S&P Capital IQ Real-Time Solutions has extended its QuantFEED and QuantLINK solutions through Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing’s (HKEx) Orion programme.
The new service provides participants with faster access to both trading platform and market data services.
The launch of the HKEx Orion Market Data (OMD) Platform and Orion Central Gateway (OCG) programme illustrates the growth of client demand for market access, connectivity, speed and efficiency across Asia. The use of S&P Capital IQ’s products through these portals will enable flexibility and faster access to low latency market data, alongside a broader scope of connectivity across major financial capitals
Elliott Management Corporation has sent a letter to the board of directors of Riverbed Technology offering to acquire all of the firm’s outstanding shares of common stock at USD19.00 per share in cash.
Elliott, affiliates of which collectively own or have economic exposure to approximately 10.5 per cent of the common stock and equivalents of Riverbed Technology, is a multi-strategy investment firm with deep experience investing in public and private companies.
According Elliot, the offer represents a significant 29 per cent premium over Riverbed Technology’s unaffected price of USD14.70.
Elementum Advisors has promoted Jake Weber and Nick Jagoda to principal, effective 1 January 2014.
Both Weber and Jagoda have been an integral part of its success dating back to the team’s tenure at Stark Investments and have performed critical roles for Elementum since its launch in 2009.
During 2013, they have strengthened the depth in the catastrophe modelling team and grown Elementum’s presence in Bermuda. Additionally, both have taken on more public roles representing Elementum with external constituencies such as investors, intermediaries and counterparties. They will continue in their existing roles as head of catastrophe modelling and portfolio
Global Reporting Company (GRC) and REGIS-TR have teamed up to provide buy-side and corporate clients with European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) compliant trade reporting services.
The move comes ahead of the EMIR obligation to report over-the-counter (OTC) and listed derivative transactions, which comes into effect on 12 February 2014.
GRC offers firms, including corporate entities and investment managers, an end-to-end solution to address regulatory trade reporting requirements. Delivering a neutral fully outsourced service, it enables market participants to spread their trading risk by continuing to use multiple prime brokers whilst consolidating reporting tools, data mapping, process monitoring and connectivity
The Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index was up 0.99 per cent in December, bringing the yearly returns for 2013 to 8.02 per cent. The MSCI World Index returned 1.67 per cent in December and was up 21.1 per cent for 2013.
Hedge funds remained in positive territory throughout the year, suffering a setback in June and August of 2013 as uncertainty loomed in the underlying markets following the Fed's 'taper scare.' Overall, hedge fund managers were up 2.53 per cent in the first half and 5.36 per cent in the second half of the year. Most regional mandates ended the year on a positive
Commonfund has released a new white paper, “Alternatives Reality: What to Expect from Future Allocations”, by Verne O Sedlacek, the firm’s president and chief executive.
The paper explains why alternative strategies, especially private equity, venture capital and hedge funds, have been successful in increasing institutions’ portfolio returns and reducing risk over the past 20 years.
The paper also concludes that the fundamental principles that have contributed to historically higher returns among alternative investment strategies remain largely unchanged today.
The 2012 NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments found that allocations to alternatives increased to 54 per cent for 831 institutions representing
It is difficult to get excited about the “MINT” (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, Turkey) concept, says Kunal Ghosh (pictured), manager of the Allianz BRIC Stars fund…
As with BRICs, the MINT concept is based on demographics and how the mindset and behaviour of people in these countries will evolve. But the number of consumers in the MINT countries is a fraction of what is offered by the BRICs. Therefore you may get a short-term high beta performance because of the relatively small economies of countries like Nigeria but it is not something which will be more sustainable like India or China, for example.
