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By Jeremy Walton, Partner and Jayson Wood, Counsel, Appleby Global – After being a hot topic in the Cayman Islands for a number of years, the Grand Court has handed down two decisions in quick succession relating to side letters entered into by Cayman Islands corporate hedge funds.
The first was Medley Opportunity Fund Ltd. v. Fintan Master Fund Ltd & Nautical Nominees Ltd (21 June 2012), where Justice Quin decided the point that a side letter must be signed by the investor of record, and not some other party such as the beneficial owner of the shares, in order
Quantitative asset manager, Aquantum AG, which specializes in developing scientific methods to build managed futures strategies and is also a spe
Laxfield Capital, the debt origination, execution and loan management business, has appointed Daniel Smith as head of origination.
Smith joins from Eurohypo, where he was a managing director, originating and structuring a number of high profile transactions and more recently heading up its UK restructuring unit.
Laxfield Capital, founded in 2008, is a property debt origination and loan management business owned by Adam Slater and Emma Huepfl.
Laxfield Capital has origination mandates from a range of different lenders with different lending criteria. These include Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Münchener Hypothekenbank eG and, most recently, Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has charged Jeffrey Gustaveson of Carlsbad, California with fraud, misappropriation, and issuing false statements in a USD2.5m commodity pool scheme.
According to the CFTC complaint, filed on 29 August 2012, from at least January 2010 through approximately July 2010, Gustaveson accepted at least USD2,495,000 from at least four individuals to invest in a commodity futures pool.
However, rather than trade pool participants’ funds as promised, Gustaveson allegedly only used approximately USD400,000 of the funds to trade commodity futures, which resulted in a net loss.
Gustaveson kept the remaining funds in a checking account from
Newedge has hosted a seminar in Chicago for senior executives from nearly 40 of China’s top futures commission merchants on opportunities in today’s international futures market.
The China Futures Association (CFA) Orientation Program focused on strategic cooperation and featured presentations from top Newedge executives, including: Antoine Babule (pictured), chief executive officer of Newedge USA; Thibault Mudes, Americas chief operating officer and global head of COO office, prime clearing services; Ramir Cimafranca, head of institutions sales, Asia-Pacific; Gary DeWaal, special adviser; and Jim Vinci, Americas chief risk officer.
Topics covered at the seminar included new developments in the US futures
First Trust Advisors has launched a new exchange-traded fund, First Trust CBOE S&P 500 VIX Tail Hedge Fund.
A tail hedging strategy, which tries to protect a portfolio from extreme market swings resulting from unpredictable, random and unexpected events (also known as “black swans”), will be used.
This methodology may help the fund hedge against such developments and hopefully offset some of the losses in the common stock portfolio due to the unexpected events.
The CBOE VIX Tail Hedge Index, a benchmark index created by Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), tracks the performance of each equity security in the S&P
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed a civil enforcement action charging Marc Perlman and his firm, iGlobal Strategic Management, with operating a commodity pool Ponzi scheme that fraudulently solicited and accepted at least USD670,000 from at least 17 people, largely from the deaf community.
Perlman was a principal and officer of iGlobal, and neither defendant has ever been registered with the CFTC.
Specifically, the CFTC complaint, filed on 28 August 2012, alleges that from at least March 2009 through at least November 2011, iGlobal and Perlman fraudulently solicited individuals to invest in a pooled investment vehicle to trade
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed a civil anti-fraud enforcement action against Jonathan Hansen of Pearland, Texas, and his company, J Hansen Investments (JHI).
The action charges Hansen and JHI with fraudulently soliciting and accepting more than USD1.1m from the public in a commodity pool scheme. Hansen exercised sole control and ownership over JHI, was JHI’s only employee, and has been a registered associated person of JHI since 30 April 2010, according to the complaint.
The CFTC’s complaint was filed on 24 August 2012, and on 29 August Judge Nancy F. Atlas of the US District Court for
People moves are the initial focus of this week’s Asia blog, in what has been a fairly quiet seven days for Asia’s hedge fund industry.
Starting with prime brokerage, it was reported by AsianInvestor that the Royal Bank of Scotland has hired William Egan from Barclays as head of mandate sales for prime services in Asia Pacific; a newly created role and the first of David Gray’s hires since he joined from UBS to head up prime services and client execution for the region. Egan will be based in Singapore and will focus on winning mandates across FX, rates, futures
The Luxembourg Finance Ministry has submitted a draft bill transposing the European Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive to the Luxembourg Parliament.
“ALFI strongly believes that the AIFMD presents a welcome opportunity for Europe to create a brand in the alternative investment market, similar to the global brand it has created with Ucits,” says Camille Thommes (pictured), director general of the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI). “Through AIFMD, the European Union is creating the first regulated environment for alternative investment funds worldwide.”
He adds: “ALFI believes that the Luxembourg Government’s ambition to be a first-mover in transposing the
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