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The recent high levels of volatility experienced by local and global stock markets has once again highlighted the need for investors to effectively diversify their retirement portfolios. According to Thomas Schlebusch, CEO of Blue Ink Investments, investors who wish to diversify their retirement investments should be looking to South African hedge funds, which are currently offering attractive risk adjusted returns and low volatility levels…
Investors have previously had negative perceptions of hedge funds due to overseas funds related to Bernie Madoff, Long Term Capital and others. South African hedge funds though, have performed well, have a high degree of transparency,
Hermes BPK Partners LLP (Hermes BPK), the USD1.6 billion alternative advisory boutique and fund of hedge funds, and Northern Lights Capital Group LLC (NLCG), a Seattle based private equity firm focused on asset management with AUM of USD11 billion, are joining forces to launch a new investing platform designed to identify and provide access to early stage hedge fund managers for global institutional investors and pensions funds.
The joint venture will combine Hermes BPK’s expertise in the alternative investing and fund of hedge funds marketplace, which includes identifying and evaluating drivers of risk, actively engaging with managers to ensure
The Credit Suisse LAB Liquid Indices posted negative performance in August according to Dr Jordan Drachman (pictured), Head of Research for Alternative Beta Strategies at Credit Suisse.
Dr Drachman says: "The Credit Suisse Liquid Alternative Beta Index (CSLAB), which aims to reflect the performance of the overall hedge fund industry, finished down 3.36% in August. The Event Driven sector saw the most significant declines, finishing down 4.62% as the S&P downgrade of the US credit rating caused a broad market sell-off that negatively impacted the distressed equity sector. Meanwhile, the Managed Futures strategy was up 0.35% for the month as
Ingo Heinen (pictured) has joined BlackRock as Managing Director within BlackRock Alternative Investors (BAI). Heinen joins the Alternative Investment Strategy Group (AISG), a team that works closely with the client coverage and portfolio management teams to develop, position and promote BlackRock’s alternative investment solutions.
Based in London, Heinen reports to Rick Arney, BlackRock’s Head of Hedge Funds and Head of the Alternative Investment Strategy Group.
Most recently, Heinen managed Institutional Equity Derivatives and Fund-Linked Sales for Germany and Austria at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Previously he spent more than 10 years at Merrill Lynch and Nomura structuring and
Swiss Investment Managers (SIM) will launch the Directors Dealings Fund (DDF) in September, the first hedge fund in Europe and the US investing solely in the reported share dealings of company directors and senior corporate executives in their own firms.
Investing in listed companies, DDF will base its long or short investment decisions on publicly announced reports of transactions by company directors and senior management who are using their own money to buy or sell equity in their own firms.
SIM’s fund managers will employ a counterintuitive approach, using a contrarian interpretation of directors’ and managers’ share dealings. The
The Candela Fund, previously managed by Olympus Capital LLP has moved to Matrix Asset Management.
As part of the transition the fund has been re-named the Matrix Pan-European Equity Fund and Matrix Alternative Asset Management LLP has taken over as Investment Manager.
Portfolio Managers John Barden and Anthony McCarthy, who have managed the Fund since launch in 2000, delivering positive returns in nine out of ten years (including 2001, 2002 and 2008), remain at the helm.
The fund will continue with its investment objective to generate absolute returns whilst minimising volatility, by investing principally in liquid large to
Another draconian measure is set to grace the industry – FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act), says Dermot Butler (pictured) chairman of Custom House Global Fund Services Ltd and Custom House Group.
I have to say, as far as regulation goes, this worries me in terms of its pervasive nature and the number of foreign financial institutions (FFIs) it’ll affect.
Compliance on this is going to be a major headache. As I understand it, any FFI involved will be responsible for reporting the activities of American investors to the IRS. If investors are holding assets in an offshore fund and
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) Office of General Counsel has issued a no-action letter on 31 August, 2011, permitting the offer and sale in the United States of Euronext Brussels’ (EB) futures contract based on the BEL 20 Index (B20).
The B20 is a free-float, market-capitalization-weighted index of the largest and most liquid 20 stocks listed on the EB, and it serves as the blue-chip index for the Belgian equity market. As of December 2, 2010, the total adjusted market capitalization of the stocks in the B20 was approximately USD89 billion.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed and simultaneously settled charges that Roy Scarboro, Jr of Archdale, NC, fraudulently solicited approximately USD713,000 from customers to trade off-exchange foreign currency (forex).
The CFTC order also finds that Scarboro misappropriated funds for his personal use and issued false account statements to conceal that he lost most of the funds trading. Scarboro has never been registered with the CFTC.
The CFTC order requires Scarboro to pay a USD350,000 civil monetary penalty. The order also permanently prohibits Scarboro from trading on a CFTC-registered entity and from registering or seeking exemption from registration
Order book turnover on Xetra and the Xetra Frankfurt specialist trading stood at EUR181.6 billion in August – an increase by 102 per cent year-on-year (August 2010: EUR89.7 billion).
Of the EUR181.6 billion, EUR173.4 billion were attributable to Xetra (+107 per cent y-o-y, August 2010: EUR83.8 billion). EUR8.2 billion were attributable to the Xetra Frankfurt specialist trading, an increase of 38 per cent y-o-y (August 2010: EUR5.9 billion). Order book turnover on Tradegate Exchange totalled EUR4.6 billion in August, nearly four times as much y-o-y (+279 per cent, August 2010: EUR1.2 billion).


In equities, turnover reached EUR148.1 billion on Deutsche
