Latest News
GFI Group has introduced a new flat price Henry Hub Natural Gas desk.
Based in New York, the desk is led by a team of three brokers, Greg Chaves, Chris McHugh and Eugene Marquardt, who have a combined 50 plus years of experience in the commodities markets.
The new desk will work closely with GFI Group’s electronic trading platform for commodities, EnergyMatch.
Chaves, McHugh and Marquardt had worked previously together at BNP Paribas where they started the unleaded gas futures trading group. Former members of the New York Mercantile Exchange, they brokered energy commodities for BNP Paribas for over ten
Systematic Alpha Management, a New York based commodity trading adviser, has appointed Salomon Josue as its independent marketing representative in Asia.
Josue is the founder and president of Asia Pacific Advisors, an alternative investment consulting and capital introduction firm focusing on the Asia Pacific market.
Prior to forming APA, he spent over nine years conducting capital introduction activities for other firms in the alternative sector.
"We are pleased to welcome Mr. Josue aboard Systematic Alpha," says Systematic Alpha Management chief executive Peter Kambolin. "We believe Salomon’s expertise in working with Asia Pacific investors, deep understanding of his extensive client base,
The Swiss banking group Syz has appointed Marc T. Clapasson as head of business development of its institutional management division, Syz Asset Management.
Clapasson is joining the group after having held similar positions with Millennium Global in Geneva and Prime Capital in Frankfurt.
Syz Asset Management incorporates all the institutional management activities of the group – both traditional and alternative – as well as investment funds.
Before joining Syz, Clapasson was in charge of product and client development in Geneva with Millennium Global, a London-based alternative investment specialist.
Prior to that, between 2005 and 2008 he managed the business
Hedge funds posted in September their best result in 16 months, returning 4.05 per cent overall, according to the Lipper Hedge Fund Composite Index.
September’s solid return brought year-to-date performance to a positive 3.14 per cent.
The third quarter result came in at a strong 6.89 per cent, which more than cancelled out the disappointing second quarter’s negative reading (-4.13 per cent).
Long-Bias (+6.48 per cent) ranked at the top of the monthly performance league table for September.
In line with emerging stock market performance the emerging markets strategy performed solidly in September, rising 5.05 per cent month on
Following the recent turmoil in financial markets, Bernheim Dreyfus, managers of the Diva Synergy Fund, is seeing major opportunities for profit in the mergers and acquisition space.
Over the last year, the Diva Synergy Fund has achieved 11 positive months out of 12 thanks to growing M&A activity and the manager’s ability to extract alpha from hard catalyst situations.
The fund is also ranked best performer on a year-to-date and last 12 months basis worldwide in its category by Barrons, Morningstar, Barclay Hedge and Eureka Hedge.
Conditions are developing for a sustained level of deal activity over the next 18
Vantage Software has launched the Visual Pipeline Dashboard on its Insight reporting and analysis tool.
The Vantage Insight reporting and analysis platform provides the alternative investment industry with a management dashboard and data warehouse tool.
The Visual Pipeline aims to better support the development efforts of investor relations, deal and executive management teams. A single glance provides an understanding of deal and fundraising efforts, both how they are progressing over time as well as by characteristics such as industry, team member or region.
"Vantage Insight provides private equity executives with the ability to better understand team focus and manage results,"
Syncova, a provider of margin and financing solutions to hedge funds and prime brokers, has signed hedge fund Platinum Partners Value Arbitrage Fund as a new client for its Syncova Optima platform.
Founded by Mark Nordlicht in 2003 and managed by Platinum Management (NY), Platinum Partners Value Arbitrage Fund is a multi-strategy hedge fund based in New York.
Platinum Partners has chosen to deploy Syncova’s Optima platform, a margin and finance calculation engine that provides transparent and wide-ranging reporting. Optima enables hedge funds to calculate their expected margin requirement, reconcile and control differences, and attribute margin requirements to internal
Meridian Global Fund Services Group, a fund administrator, has implemented Fascet Balance and Fascet Conduit solutions for its enterprise data management.
Meridian Global Fund Services now has data normalisation and business process management solutions and the ability to automate the process of transaction matching and account reconciliation.
“Our implementation of the Fascet solutions for fund administrators has significantly increased the functionality of our back office and provides more efficiency in daily and monthly processing for our investment management clients,” says Tom Davis, chief executive Meridian Global Fund Services. “The complexity of our growing client base demanded a solution that allowed
Bank of America Merrill Lynch has launched its commodity alpha and beta family of Ucits III funds: the MLCX Commodity Enhanced Beta Fund; the MLCX Agriculture Optimal Crop Fund; and the MLCX Commodity Alpha Fund.
Forming part of the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Invest platform, all three Ucits-compliant funds offer solutions for commodity investors looking to achieve beta and/or alpha exposure to commodity markets.
The funds track underlying indices created by BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research.
The MLCX Commodity Enhanced Beta Fund and MLCX Agriculture Optimal Crop Fund offer investors a long only diversified exposure to commodity markets with
Agecroft Partners predicts that pension plans will significantly increase their exposure to mid-sized hedge funds over the next ten years.
The firm says the pension fund industry is in the process of a major evolution in its use of hedge funds that has implications on what per cent of their portfolio they allocate to hedge funds and how they achieve their hedge fund exposure, which will have profound implications for mid-sized fund managers.
The pension fund industry has a very glacial approach to changes in asset allocation which can take a couple decades to fully implement across the industry. Although
