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By James Williams – One thing is certain: hedge fund regulation in the US is tightening and is here to stay. What remains uncertain is the long-term impact it will have on the industry. Recent high-profile insider trading cases involving Galleon Group LLC and, this summer, SAC Capital Advisors, have put a spring in the step of its national regulator, the Securities & Exchange Commission.
As reported by Reuters, the SEC filed 735 enforcement actions in 2011 and collected USD928million in penalties: a fourfold increase on 2008.
With the introduction of Form PF last year, and the establishment of the
Law firm Brown Rudnick has appointed Peter Bibby as a partner in the London office.
Bibby was head of enforcement at the Financial Services Authority from 1998 to 2002.
Bibby joins the firm’s rapidly expanding international white collar and investigations practice, which has doubled in size in the last 12 months following several senior appointments. Bibby will work alongside a team of 17 focusing on financial services criminal and regulatory investigations.
Mark Beardsworth, co-head of Brown Rudnick’s international white collar crime and investigations group, says: “Peter’s appointment is yet another decisive step forward in the continuing expansion
Following the comments from Ben Bernanke in May, investors have clearly priced in some form of tapering with government bond yields having risen and prices having fallen. The decision by the Fed not to reduce the amount of QE each month therefore came as a big surprise, says Adrian Lowcock, Hargreaves Lansdown…
It appears the Fed were concerned by recent fiscal tightening, i.e. bond yields rising, which were largely caused by the Feds comments in May that they were going to implement tapering, So talk of tapering seems to have delayed the real thing.
Stock Markets in the US
AKJ, an independent brokerage and software group serving the institutional and hedge fund industries, has appointed Tom Mackay as general counsel.
Mackay has provided legal consultancy to AKJ for more than 12 years, but with the formation of AKJ Accelerator in 2012, his role has now developed into a more senior position.
AKJ Accelerator is a hedge fund solution for fund managers, which takes care of all the necessary components involved with the set up and day-to-day operation of a fund. As AKJ’s general counsel, Mackay is responsible for the global regulatory framework within AKJ Accelerator and will
The Newedge CTA and Trend Indices decreased in August, finishing down 1.75 per cent and 2.53 per cent respectively.
Commodity strategies, as represented by the Newedge Commodity Index and its sub-indices, were positive in August, while the Newedge Macro Indices encountered a difficult trading environment.
The top year-to-date performer through August remains the Newedge Commodity Trading Index (Equity), which has returned 13.30 per cent over the eight-month period.
Performance of the Newedge Short-Term Traders Index remains positive on the year (+1.94 per cent) and continues to display differentiated returns from longer-term strategies.
Ryan Duncan, global co-head
Fund sponsors are upgrading to more sophisticated fund governance solutions by moving beyond the friction of limited service providers to more widely-adopted institutional protocols.
This growth is reflected in DMS Offshore Investment Services’ 54 per cent increase in assets under management of its client funds from the prior year – which jumped from USD214bn to USD330bn – and is based on significant demand for its institutional fund governance services, particularly regulated directors, fund governance transparency reports, and independent director reports.
The firm increased its talent to more than 200 professionals during the same period.
"DMS is a
SYZ Asset Management, the institutional asset management arm of the Swiss banking Group SYZ & Co, has appointed Ian Penrose as distribution director for the UK.
Penrose, who will be responsible for promoting SYZ Asset Management’s (SYZ AM) capabilities, including the SYZ AM and Oyster funds, joins from Barclays Capital Funds & Advisory, where he was responsible for leading fund distribution to UK professional clients.
Penrose will be in charge of promoting the full range of SYZ Asset Management’s capabilities to the UK domestic market, including segregated mandates as well as the SYZ AM and OYSTER funds. With
The European repo market stands at EUR6,076bn, according to a survey by the European Repo Council of the International Capital Market Association (ICMA).
This represents an increase of 8.6 per cent in the size of the market since the last survey in December 2012.
This recovery in the European repo market is in marked contrast to the contraction in the US repo market which was widely reported in July. The revival in repo activity in Europe appears to be driven by banks in the eurozone returning to the market for funding as they start to repay the exceptional
Investors are leading the way in shaping the future of the alternative investment industry, according to a soon to be published global survey by State Street.
The survey canvassed the opinions of 400 alternative fund managers from hedge funds, private equity firms and real estate funds.
“The Next Alternative: Thriving in a New Fund Environment” finds that fund managers see investor demands for greater transparency, more favourable fees and greater liquidity at the fund level as three of the top five drivers of change over the next five years.
“Alternative asset managers that want to create a
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) division of market oversight has issued a letter advising the Hong Kong Futures Exchange that its CES China 120 Index futures contract and its HSI Volatility Index futures contract submitted for review on 2 August 2013 are deemed certified.
The contracts satisfy the requirements of the Commodity Exchange Act and the Commission’s Regulations and may be offered or sold to persons in the US beginning 17 September 2013.
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