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Introducing The Alternative View – the quarterly e-newsletter featuring all the latest insight and thinking from BlackRock’s Head of Alternatives, Matt Botein.
Liontrust Asset Management Plc has named Singer Capital Markets (Singers) as the company’s financial adviser and corporate broker with immediate effect. This is a key appointment in Liontrust’s strategy to raise its profile among analysts and institutional investors as it continues to grow and expand the business.
John Ions (pictured), Chief Executive of Liontrust, says: “We have been impressed by Singers’ professionalism and expertise when different parts of our business have dealt with them. We were attracted by Singers’ strength in financial services research, where the team focus mainly on asset managers.
“Like Liontrust, Singers is looking to grow its
DBFS has enhanced the planning functionality of Asset+, its front to back office platform for managers running hedge funds, fund of hedge funds and asset management portfolios.
Fund of hedge funds investors are beginning to demand greater transparency to ensure that managers are truly capturing alpha rather than providing a diluted beta. The requirement to deliver steady monthly returns with low volatility has to some extent led to some managers choosing arbitrage strategies that profit from price convergence whilst ignoring the fat tail risks associated with market downturns.
Asset+ has enhanced its modelling capabilities to enable users to better quantify
The dysfunctional markets of 2011 (or should that be four years?) are making it difficult to provide investors with absolute returns. However over 50% of Australian Hedge Funds have provided a positive return over the past 12 months, demonstrating that investors should be increasing their allocation to hedge funds in 2012 – provided they invested in the right 50%.
Meanwhile only 10% of the 270 funds in AFM’s database have under-performed the fall in the ASX200 of 10.13% over the 12 months to the end of November. Depending on how far down the list they sit, the other 50% of
Dow Jones Indexes and UBS Securities have launched the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index 2-4-6 Forward Blend, a gauge that measures diversified exposure to longer-dated commodity futures contracts spread across the commodity price curve.
An enhanced version of the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index, the Dow Jones-UBS Commodity Index 2-4-6 Forward Blend reflects the return of underlying commodity futures price movements. Also introduced was a total return version of the index, which reflects the return on fully collateralised futures positions.
The index is constructed as an equally weighted basket of the two-month, four-month and six-month forward versions of the Dow Jones-UBS
Despite fears this year that the US municipal bond market would suffer large-scale defaults it’s held up well. Last December, banking analyst Meredith Whitney predicted hundreds of billions of dollars of defaults. So far, however, there’s only been USD2.8billion in defaults, reported the Financial Times last week.
Performance in the market has been surprisingly strong. A triple-A rated 30-year US muni bond with a five per cent coupon yielded 5.12 per cent mid-January according to Municipal Market Advisors – since then, prices have risen and the yield has dropped to 3.7 per cent. As a tax-free investment for US investors,
TIM Group has launched a new service that enables the fund of hedge funds (FoHFs) industry to react faster to changing market and industry conditions.
Through a series of newly developed Application Program Interfaces (APIs), TIM Funds Connect enables TIM Funds users to "plug and play," "mix and match," and interact seamlessly with virtually any in-house or third party technology based system or data/information service.
"The FoHF industry no longer needs to fear being ‘locked in’ to anything," says Jonathan Bradshaw, TIM Funds Client Director. "Connect provides FoHFs and their administrators with the ability to access their data when
Returns Invested in Children and Education (RICE), a Hong Kong and Singapore registered charity launched by Asia-based asset managers and their service providers, raised HKD600,000 in donations at the organisation’s first fundraising event in Hong Kong.
The event was attended by around 200 members of Hong Kong’s asset management community. This included fund managers and corporate service providers, such as prime brokers, lawyers, accountants and fund administrators.
Paul Smith (pictured), Head of Fundraising in Asia for RICE, says: “The Hong Kong launch event received tremendous support from individual donors, particularly fund managers and service providers who attended and generously supported
SEI has unveiled a new service that assists SEC-registered investment advisers of private funds in meeting their Form PF obligations.
Form PF was recently jointly adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It requires SEC-registered advisers to hedge funds and other private funds with at least USD150 million in private fund assets under management to report information to the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) to enable the FSOC to monitor risk to the US financial system.
Having worked closely with industry consultants and after performing considerable analysis, SEI has developed a
eFront, a software provider of solutions for the alternative investment market, has opened a new office in the heart of Singapore’s financial and trade centre.
The new office, eFront’s third in Asia, will focus on addressing the private equity, real estate and infrastructure investment sectors. Complementing the teams operating out of Hong Kong and Beijing, the Singapore-based team of eFront consultants will provide local implementation service and support to eFront customers in South-East Asia.
With its mature financial infrastructure, Singapore is considered one of Asia’s foremost financial centres and is an important hub for foreign investments in growing Asian economies such
