Latest News
Barclays has successfully cleared in excess of USD1 trillion notional of interest rates, credit and FX over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives transactions on behalf of its clients.
Over the past months, Barclays has seen a significant increase in clients voluntarily clearing, underscoring the heightened focus that buy-side clients are placing on central clearing. Since clearing the industry’s first client CDS transaction and the first client interest rates transaction in December 2009, Barclays has consistently invested in its business and worked with clients and other industry participants to prepare for centralised clearing ahead of regulatory deadlines.
Barclays USD1 trillion of cleared notional
Mark Hawtin, fund manager of the GAM Star Technology Fund has recently returned from a regular visit to the Silicon Valley and Seattle. Her he provides an update on finding value in the Technology sector…
Our core investment themes are cloud, mobility, social networking, video and mobile payments. I believe mobility is currently the most attractive because of the huge opportunity presented by an installed base of 4 billion users, over four times the size of the PC installed base.
Everyone identifies that mobility will drive the adoption of video, social networking and mobile payments. These are the services that
Fitch Ratings says it expects direct lending through funds to gain momentum as European bank deleveraging continues to drive corporate disintermediation.
Fitch expects assets such as properties or corporate loans to be increasingly financed via funds, which will often have recourse to debt to increase returns for junior/equity investors, typically pension funds or insurers.
In this context, the agency has recently come across several transactions aimed at providing financing to funds. Funds with financing (or senior share classes) are typically limited partnerships, closed end funds or lightly regulated vehicles invested in private equity (corporate and projects), loans, bonds and properties.
Charlie Chan, the founder of Singapore-based Charlie Chan Capital Partners Pte, has had a great start to the year.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has obtained a federal court consent order requiring defendants Victor Eugene Cilli and his company, Progressive Investment Funds LLC (Progressive), both formerly of Hackensack, NJ, to pay, jointly and severally, restitution of USD243,000 and a USD474,000 civil monetary penalty in connection with operating a commodity pool Ponzi scheme that defrauded investors of over USD500,000 and misappropriated investor funds.
The court’s order also finds that the defendants made false statements to the National Futures Association (NFA), failed to distribute required reports to pool participants, and failed to keep required books and records.
The consent order of permanent injunction,
By Craig Bridgewater – In a global environment in which clients are placing increased emphasis on greater quality and transparency among providers of alternative investments and put a premium on trust in their relationships, Bermuda is well positioned to capitalise on its established reputation for expertise and effective regulation to expand its position as a fund domicile with appeal in markets around the world.
Over the past few years KPMG has been closely involved in the development of the Bermuda fund industry. In addition to helping managers set up new funds, handle ongoing issues and deal with the increasing global
By Simon Gray – Much of the alternative fund administration industry has been located in offshore financial centres since the 1990s, when the so-called ‘10 commandments’ obliged funds to carry out various functions outside the United States to avoid tax complications. While the position has since changed, and a number of onshore centres in the United States and Canada are now significant fund service hubs, jurisdictions such as Bermuda that have provided administration as well as domicile to hedge funds for several decades remain centres of excellence within the sector.
While some of the activity once carried out in Bermuda
Interview with Jason McAlpine – Two specialist areas of expertise within Bermuda’s financial services industry, asset management and insurance/reinsurance, are coming together in what has become known as the convergence or insurance-linked assets market, where hedge funds, other asset managers and institutions such as pension funds are becoming primary providers of capital to an insurance or reinsurance platform.
“The (re)insurance market, in part because of the central role of Lloyd’s, has long been a particularly tight-knit, even closed, community with regard to the source of capital, the players and brokerage relationships,” says Jason McAlpine, a partner in the financial services
By Cheryl Packwood – The past few years have been a difficult period for the global alternative fund industry. In most jurisdictions – China is an exception – the number of new funds established has been in decline. Everywhere fund managers are facing new regulatory requirements as well as increased demands from clients for greater transparency over their investments.
During the industry’s heyday in the early to mid-2000s, Bermuda’s decades-long adherence to the principle of sound regulation and effective oversight cost the jurisdiction business to rivals whose regulatory approach was less rigorous. But in today’s environment, the new focus on
By Simon Gray – It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and if anything positive has come out of the global financial crisis for Bermuda’s fund industry, it is that the jurisdiction’s longstanding focus on effective regulatory oversight is now seen more as a positive signal of concern about compliance with global standards and protection of fund investors than a tiresome impediment in the way of getting to market or a cost drag hampering performance.
Not that Bermuda’s regulatory framework for the alternative investment sector is particularly irksome – simply, participants say, that the new international focus on
Special Reports
FeatureD
- Insight
