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Insurers and investors should prioritise investing in assets with little or no correlation to financial markets given the uncertain future for the global economy, according to PDL International, a provider of investment services to institutional and high net worth clients.
Speaking at the first Asia Conference on Investment and Portfolio Management for the Insurance Industry in Hong Kong, Keith Campbell Golding (pictured), chief representative for PDL in Asia, told an audience of senior management figures at insurers across the region that given the current economic climate, picking the right combination of assets in investment portfolios has never been so important.
Jeff Keen (pictured), fund manager, Waverton Global Bond fund, J O Hambro Investment Management (JOHIM), on the impact of the Fed’s and ECB’s stimulus measures…
September saw the official confirmation of long awaited stimulus initiatives from both the Fed and ECB. The Fed announced an open-ended QE programme, focused on purchasing USD40bn of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) a month as well as extending its conditional commitment to leave its policy rate at near-zero through mid-2015. It also stressed that future policy action will depend on how economic conditions develop with a particular focus on the level of unemployment.


Meanwhile, the ECB
Hedge fund manager Man Group has reported net outflows of USD2.2bn in Q3 2012 up from USD1.4bn in the previous quarter.
This is the fifth straight quarter that the firm has seen net withdrawals of client funds although it stresses that the latest outflows are concentrated in lower margin product lines (institution fund of funds and GLG long-only).
Funds under management (FUM) as at 30 September 2012 totalled USD60.0bn, up 14 per cent since 30 June 2012 (USD52.7bn) with Man’s acquisition of FRM, which closed on 17 July, adding some USD8.3bn.
“The flow environment continues to be challenging and this
Greg Coffey (pictured), one of the star traders of the UK hedge fund industry, is quitting Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management to return to his native Australia.
According to reports, the 41-year-old, who is reckoned to have accumulated an estimated GBP260 million during his career, is taking early retirement to spend more time with his wife and three young children.
Coffey, known as the Wizard of Oz in trading circles, informed investors of his decision by letter. He intends to liquidate the GC Moore Emerging Macro Fund by the end of the year.
Coffey is no stranger to making bold
Natural catastrophe and weather risk reinsurance specialist Nephila Capital has joined the Hedge Funds Standards Board (HFSB) as a signatory member.
HFSB brings together managers, investors, regulators and consultants from around the world to help determine how the hedge fund industry should operate.
Over 76 hedge fund managers so far have committed to the standards accounting for over USD260bn in assets under management. Sixty major international investors, including pension and endowment funds, sovereign wealth funds and funds of funds, have embraced the HFSB as members of the organisation’s Investor Chapter to drive adoption of the standards.
"As part of the
The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged a former USD1bn hedge fund advisory firm and two executives with scheming to overvalue assets under management and exaggerate the reported returns of hedge funds they managed in order to hide losses and increase the fees collected from investors.
The SEC alleges that New Jersey-based Yorkville Advisors, founder and president Mark Angelo, and chief financial officer Edward Schinik enticed pension funds and other investors to invest in their hedge funds by falsely portraying Yorkville as a firm that managed a highly-collateralized investment portfolio and employed a robust valuation procedure. They misrepresented the safety
Altin, the Swiss alternative investment company listed on the London and Swiss stock exchanges, has disclosed its entire hedge fund portfolio holdings.
The portfolio, featuring more than 30 underlying hedge funds and representing over 10 investment strategies, has a net asset value performance of +164.83 per cent since its inception in December 1996.
The portfolio as at 1 October 2012 is as follows:
Macro strategy – 17.13 per cent
AlphaMosaic SPC – SP 127 Episteme Capital Partners LLP Systematic Quest Fund 3X – 1.43 per cent
Comac Global Macro Fund Ltd – 3.79 per cent
Goldfinch Capital Management Offshore Ltd
Imagine Software, a provider of real-time portfolio and risk management solutions worldwide, has launched a risk aggregation platform.
The Imagine Risk Aggregator, which has already been adopted by SkyBridge Capital, helps all those investing across multiple funds and asset classes around the globe achieve greater transparency into investments, access more meaningful risk analyses, and foster increased investor confidence in risk exposure data.
SkyBridge Capital is a global research driven alternative investment firm with approximately USD6.6bn in total assets under advisement or management as of 31 August.
“We are pleased that SkyBridge Capital selected the Imagine Risk Aggregator to provide advanced
AlphaClone, a specialist in hedge fund position replication, reports 2012 performance through Q3 for its Momentum Select and AlphaClone Select portfolios of 33 and 18.7 per cent, respectively.
The performance of these rules-based clone portfolios ranks among the top decile of hedge fund returns for the year based on research from Goldman Sachs as reported by Business Insider, supporting the utility of 13-F disclosure research as a basis for successful investment strategies.
The performance of AlphaClone’s Momentum Select and AlphaClone Select strategies also outperformed the S&P500, which returned 16.4 per cent through September 2012. The average long/short equity hedge fund
Eurex Exchange has launched a new incentive programme for trading participants based in Asia and Australia.
The initiative – launched at the beginning of October – aims to attract new participants to Eurex and to make trading even more interesting for existing members.
The programme offers significant reductions in connection fees and will grant additional volume-based discounts for Asian-based subsidiaries of existing Eurex members.
Eurex Exchange is also considerably expanding bandwidth at its network Access Points in Hong Kong and Singapore. From January 2013 participants will be able to obtain connections of up to 80 Mbit/s. Until now, the maximum
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