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In a guest speech prior to introducing a series of panel discussions in the morning session of day 2 at Gaim International, Robert Jenkins (pictured), external member of the financial policy committee, Bank of England, offered three personal observations from what he termed a macro-prudential regulatory perspective. Before doing so he candidly explained his role by recounting a story he told his wife. Said Jenkins anecdotally: “We’re trying to protect the banks from the financial system and the financial system from the banks!”
Jenkins’ first observation, in relation to the Greek situation and market stresses in the eurozone, was that
Kicking off proceedings on Day 2 at Gaim International 2012, Tushar Patel of HFIM moderated a panel to discuss today’s seeding environment and how different seeders approach the investment process. Sitting on the panel were Patric de Gentile Williams of FRM, Mona Aboelnaga Kanaan of Proctor Investment Managers, Jeroen Tielman (pictured) of seeding platform IMQubator, and Philippe Paquet of Newalpha Asset Management.
In response to why investors allocate to seeders like FRM, de Gentile Williams gave two reasons: to gain exposure to early stage emerging managers for targeted sources of alpha, and also because seed investing gives investors a substantial
Institutionalisation of the hedge fund industry was the key talking point in a panel discussion chaired by Dan Shapiro (pictured), partner of Schulte Roth & Zabel International. The panel included Jane Buchan, CEO of FoHF firm PAAMCO, Peter Schoenfeld, chairman and CEO of PSAM, Bernard Oppetit, chairman of Centaurus Capital, and Nicholas Botta, CFO of activist fund Pershing Square Capital Management.
Currently, about 60 per cent of the industry’s USD2trillion AUM is now institutional money, with Shapiro noting that in a recent discussion he was told that 90 per cent of new money allocating to hedge funds is institutional in
Sciens Fund of Funds Management Holdings, part of the Sciens Capital Management Group and provider of single- and multi-strategy funds of hedge funds and managed account services, has appointed Tim Wilkinson as President of Sciens Fund of Funds Management Holdings.
In this capacity Wilkinson will report into Sciens Fund of Funds CEO, Stavros Siokos and will be active across the range of Sciens’ products and services; encompassing private equity and real assets alongside the firm’s liquid asset capabilities (absolute return strategies and managed account platform services). Wilkinson will have particular responsibility for the firm’s global business development and distribution,
Future Capital Partners (FCP), the GBP6 billion alternative investment boutique, has appointed Anthony Rogers as Business Development Manager.
Rogers will be responsible for raising awareness of and presenting FCP’s range of innovative investment products to financial advisers, accountants and tax planners in the South East region.
Initially, Rogers will focus on promoting FCP’s ground-breaking investment opportunity ‘Future Fuels’ which will allow UK investors to invest in the rapidly growing Renewable Transport Fuels (RTF) sector for the first time. He will also be responsible for endorsing the firm’s luxury real estate development investment opportunity in Montenegro, which is funding the construction
Hedge funds lost 2.98% in May, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge. The Index remains up 1.77% in 2012.
“Falling equity prices worldwide weighed heavily on hedge fund performance in May,” says Sol Waksman (pictured), founder and president of BarclayHedge. “Funds trading in companies within the energy and natural resource sectors were hit particularly hard, as fears of slowing growth in China and a recession in Europe put investors back into risk-off mode.
“Equity Long Bias, European Equities, Emerging Markets, and Pacific Rim Equities traders all took losses for the second month in a row,” says
PerTrac, a provider of analytics, reporting and communications software for investment professionals, has released RiskPlus 2.0, an upgrade to its award-winning application for managing portfolio risk.
Built in partnership with FinAnalytica, the leading provider of multi-asset class predictive performance analytics solutions to investment managers, RiskPlus 2.0 provides portfolio managers, risk analysts and chief investment officers the flexibility to customise factor models and stress tests to better evaluate the risks associated with increased market volatility.
“Using PerTrac RiskPlus has allowed us to identify risks in our portfolio and be smarter about the funds we invest in and the strategies we
Gavyn Davies (pictured), chairman of Fulcrum Asset Management, chaired a panel discussion on how Greek elections and eurozone political upheavals are shaping the markets. Part of the discussion was to establish the extent of bullish/bearish sentiment of Gaim International 2012’s audience. Karlheinz Muhr, CEO of QFS Asset Management and Mark Poole, CIO, BlueBay Asset Management, were the other two panellists.
Noting that there was an important meeting on 22nd June between Merkel and Hollande, Poole believed it would give some indication as to how much ground Germany is likely to give and said the Greek situation was an inflection
Nassim Nicholas Taleb (pictured), principal of Universa Investments and famed author of “The Black Swan”, delivered a keynote speech on some useful properties of barbells at Gaim International 2012. Noting that the opposite of fragile is “antifragile”, Taleb explained that barbells – a type of investment strategy that sits on both ends of the yield curve for example in bonds – possess this antifragile characteristic, enabling them to benefit from crises.
Barbells, then, have the capacity to turn something that’s robust into something antifragile.
If you have a lot of upside and a lot of downside in a portfolio (left
Manager skill continues to take centre stage in these volatile times according to GAIM conference director Victoria Chatterton (pictured). With that in mind, this year’s event focuses on four big picture themes:
Evolving investor opinions on manager selection and asset allocation
Making money in volatile times
Business strategies for a low return & high regulation era
Hedge fund regulation & the way forward for hedge fund distribution
“Risk management is now so much more integral to the hedge fund and the investment process. As a result we have extended our thinking on this and have included two new panels –
