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Gottex Fund Management Holdings Limited has reached agreement on the acquisition of Hong Kong based Penjing Asset Management (Penjing), one of the primary Asian alternative asset management providers. Ronnie Wu, founder and CIO of Penjing, will join Gottex as a senior executive in Asia.
Gottex has agreed to acquire the entire share capital of Penjing, a profitable alternatives manager with USD4341 million of assets under management across a range of Asian focused products. The consideration involves a combination of Gottex shares (up to 1.75 million) and additional cash, payable over a period of two years and adjusted for Penjing’s future
Thomas Riegert, CFA, has joined boutique alternative investment specialist Hatteras Funds as Associate, Portfolio Management. He will support portfolio and risk management, manager research and due diligence for the Hatteras Alternative Mutual Funds.
"After years of equity underperformance and volatility, investors and their advisors are increasingly turning to alternatives for flexibility and diversification," says Bob Worthington, President of Hatteras Funds. "We believe that all investors should have access to the same sophisticated approach and superior portfolio management talent as the largest institutions. Thomas’ extensive experience in portfolio construction, research and analysis, due diligence and risk management will further add to
LCH.Clearnet has launched its international CDSClear service, an extension to the established domestic French offering launched in March 2010. CDSClear now offers a multi-jurisdictional CDS clearing framework.
CDSClear currently works with four French member banks (BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank, Natixis, Société Génerale), however, following the launch LCH.Clearnet is pleased to announce that it will now be working with an additional 10 international institutions – BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
CDSClear clears Series 5 and above of the Markit iTraxx Europe, HiVol and Crossover indices
The gross return of the GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index for April, 2012 measured 0.51%. Year-to-date (YTD) the index is up 3.66% and over the last twelve months has recorded positive performance of 1.22%.
“The GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index was positive in April,” says Hans Hufschmid (pictured), chief executive officer, GlobeOp Financial Services. “The data supports the pattern of low equity market correlation that the Performance Index has established since inception in 2006. It also underlines the Index’s value as a proxy for a diversified portfolio of hedge fund investments.”
Prologue Capital, a global/macro investment firm that manages a discretionary fixed income strategy, has recruited Michael Chapey and Noah Estrin.
Chapey, Portfolio Manager, will work from the firm’s Greenwich, CT office and reports to Graham Walsh, founding partner and Chief Investment Officer. Estrin, a Senior Portfolio Manager will also be based in Greenwich and will report to Walsh. Both will focus on trading US Agency mortgages.
“Michael and Noah both have proven track records and will add to the firm’s deep expertise,” says David Lofthouse, CEO.
Chapey’s joins Prologue after spending 15 years as managing director at RBS Greenwich Capital,
The Threadneedle UK Absolute Alpha Fund, co-managed by Mark Westwood and Chris Kinder, has delivered top quartile returns since its launch on 1 October 2010, and has now reached over USD100m in assets.
The Threadneedle UK Absolute Alpha Fund is a UCITS UK equity long/short fund which aims to generate the majority of performance from stock selection. The fund returned 8.8%¹ since inception compared to 3 month GBP Libor return of 1.3%² and the FTSE100 return of 6.8%.
Gary Collins, Head of UK Wholesale, says: “Funds that deliver positive returns regardless of market conditions are in strong demand as a
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed an enforcement action in the US District Court for the Central District of California, charging Michael J Leighton of Torrance, California, with solicitation fraud and issuing false statements in connection with the operation of a commodity trading pool.
According to the CFTC complaint, filed on 8 May, 2012, Leighton defrauded and deceived at least 42 pool participants who invested at least USD1.6 million in a commodity pool he operated from at least July 2008 and continuing through the present.
The complaint alleges that Leighton told prospective pool participants that he was a successful
By Georg Wessling – Many investors have been disappointed with their hedge fund returns over the past couple of years. This is justified to the extent that many hedge funds and funds of hedge funds have not achieved the targets promised to their investors. However, it should be noted that many investors have also failed to define realistic investment targets.
Harcourt Advisory has identified three groups of hedge fund strategies with distinct return and risk characteristics. The added value of the first group comes from alpha generated through superior security selection (selection alpha).
However, these strategies do not deliver pure
“The landscape for alternative investments is at an interesting and important inflection point,” says Michael Appenzeller. “Managers as well as investors need to cope with an unprecedented array of change.”
Appenzeller is co-founder of Etops, a service company with offices in Pfäffikon and Bratislava that -specialises in operational solutions for both single managers and organisations running multi-manager portfolios including funds of funds, family offices and private banks.
Switzerland remains a key hub for funds of funds, family offices, private banks and other alternative asset investors, but while institutions value the role played by hedge funds in their portfolios, they struggle
As an independent division of Pictet Group, Pictet Alternative Investments benefits from the stability of the parent company, which last year collected USD15bn in net new assets. More than USD1bn went to PAI, which manages a total of around USD12.3bn in alternative assets including USD9.4bn in hedge funds.
According to PAI chief executive Nicolas Campiche (pictured), there is no obvious difference in approach between private and institutional clients; many of PAI’s private clients are large family offices that often apply institutional investment standards.
However, one major change over the last few years, according to Campiche, is that alternative investments in
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