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Nomura Asia Holding, the Asian arm of the Japanese bank’s global prime brokerage division, is finally ready to laun
Christopher Spiegleman, former director of tax at J.H. Whitney, has joined the Metro New York alternative investment funds practice at WTAS as a managing director in the Greenwich office.
Spiegelman brings a strong background in multiple industries and areas of taxation including investment partnerships, alternative investments, private equity, hedge and debt funds.
At Whitney, Spiegelman addressed tax planning and structuring issues at the investor level, fund level, portfolio investment level and fund manager level. In addition, he worked closely with the principals of the firm to achieve wealth preservation including estate and insurance planning.
"Chris’ skill set is an excellent
IndexIQ saw six out of seven of its hedge fund replication and alternative beta indices post a negative performance in November.
The worst performing beta index was long/short, which fell by 2.80 per cent in November.
This was followed by global macro, which was down 2.18 per cent.
The only index posting a positive performance for the month was fixed income arbitrage, which rose by 0.45 per cent.
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed an enforcement action in the US District Court for the District of Utah, charging MXBK Group, a private Mexican financial services holding company, and its foreign currency trading division, MBFX, with issuing false customer statements and misrepresenting trading results on its website in connection with its foreign currency trading enterprise.
MBFX Group has never been registered in any capacity with the CFTC.
The CFTC’s complaint alleges that, from at least 2005 to the present, the defendants accepted at least USD28m from more than 800 US customers for the purpose of trading forex
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has obtained more than USD26m in restitution and civil monetary penalties against defendants Kenneth W. Lee, Simon Yang, Prestige Ventures and Federated Management Group, and relief defendants Sheila Lee, Darren Lee and David Lee.
The court’s order stems from a joint action filed by the CFTC and the Oklahoma Department of Securities on 20 November 2009, charging the defendants with fraudulently operating a multi-million dollar commodity futures Ponzi scheme with 140 participants.
On 27 October 2010, the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma granted summary judgment against the defendants, finding that
The Hennessee Hedge Fund Index advanced 0.32 per cent in November and is up 7.12 per cent year-to-date.
The Hennessee Long/Short Equity Index advanced 0.71 per cent in November (+6.09 per cent YTD).
While large capitalisation US equities were effectively flat on the month, smaller capitalisation equities rallied, as highlighted by the Russell 2000 index, which closed up 3.4 per cent for November (+16.25 per cent YTD).
From a sector perspective, the defensive oriented utilities (-3.6 per cent), healthcare (-3.2 per cent) and consumer staples (-1.4 per cent) were the weakest performers during the month, while cyclicals, such as energy
The International Securities Exchange has released an updated schedule for the launch of its new options trading system, based on Deutsche Börse Group’s Optimise trading architecture.
The roll-out of Optimise at ISE will begin in April 2011 and continue into July as both ISE’s primary and second markets migrate to the new platform.
Based on input from ISE member firms, ISE completely revised the Optimise implementation timetable and will now provide greater system functionality from day one of the Optimise launch.
Daniel Friel, ISE’s chief information officer, says: “In developing our new trading system built on the Optimise platform, we
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has obtained a default judgment order requiring FX Professional International Solutions and its principals, Pedro de Sousa and Guillermo Rosario, to pay more than USD4m in civil monetary penalties for issuing false account statements to customers in an off-exchange foreign currency fraud.
The default order stems from a CFTC complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida on 13 July 2010.
The court’s default judgment order finds that Rosario and de Sousa solicited at least USD535,000 from four customers to trade forex contracts through FXP and falsely represented that,
Appleby Authorised Representative, an affiliate of Appleby Corporate Services (BVI), has been certified by the BVI Financial Services Commission to act as an authorised representative under the Securities and Investment Business Act 2010.
Under SIBA, a licensee (unless it has a significant presence in the British Virgin Islands) and a recognised or registered investment fund is required to appoint and at all times have an authorised representative in the BVI.
The main function of an authorised representative is to act as an intermediary in the BVI between the licensee or investment fund and Commission.
The authorised representative is also required
Early estimates indicate the Dow Jones Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index pulled back in November, posting slightly negative performance of 0.28 per cent for the month.
Five out of the ten sectors in the index generated positive performance for the month and the industry is up an estimated 7.72 per cent for the year.
Despite overall global equity markets losses, with the Dow Jones Global Index down 2.16 per cent for the month, long/short equity managers were among the best performers in November finishing up an estimated 0.58 per cent. Positive performance in the space was largely driven by stock-specific
