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Insparo Asset Management, the frontier markets investment specialist, has appointed Throgmorton UK, one of the UK’s largest accountancy and professional service providers to the hedge fund, private equity and corporate finance industries, to deliver a range of accountancy and back office services.
Insparo will use Throgmorton’s full suite of services for its management vehicles, including managing the firm’s human resources, payroll, secretarial data, company accounts, and tax compliance.
Insparo’s flagship Insparo Africa and Middle East fund has returned over 43 per cent in the last 18 months. The firm, whose backers include Icap founder Michael Spencer, has a team of
A combination of a volatile interest rate environment and increased regulation imposed on US banks regarding the use of capital for proprietary trading has boosted the performance of local South African hedge funds during the first half of 2010.
The results of the Blue Ink All South African Hedge Fund Composite, which tracks the performance of around 100 hedge funds in South Africa, showed that local hedge funds have returned 3.54 per cent in the year to date to June, compared to the -4.06 per cent produced by the All Share Index.
These hedge fund returns have also been achieved
Managed futures managers experienced mixed performance for July, the latest report from Lipper Tass shows.
While discretionary managers saw gains benefiting from long equity, commodity trading exposures and yields edging downwards, systematic traders ended in negative territory on market trend reversals as riskier assets rallied.
Long-term trend followers generally finished the month with negative returns; they were caught with long positions in US dollars, gold, and silver and did not benefit from the rally in the remaining commodities.
The Lipper Managed Futures/CTAs index registered a positive return of 1.02 per cent for July, bringing the year-to-date performance to minus 2.94
The structure of the hedge fund business is now more at risk of declining if performance is not sustained, a report by Lipper says.
This is especially true for the so-called lower-tier firms below USD250m in assets that have significant overhead and struggle to get sizeable institutional investor allocations.
Macro and discretionary managed futures managers, along with the fixed income and emerging strategies, are expected to top the performance league table in the short run. The volatility arbitrage and dedicated short-bias strategies might be a bright spot, the report says.
The euro will struggle to hold above USD1.29 on uneasiness
Ayaltis has launched the Ayaltis Acantias Offshore fund, a fund of hedge funds focused on undervalued assets in the stressed and distressed credit space.
The Morningstar 1000 Hedge Fund Index rose 2.7 per cent in July, while the currency-hedged Morningstar MSCI Composite Hedge Fund Index climbed 0.9 per cent.
Year to date through July, these indexes were up 0.4 per cent and 1.7 per cent, respectively.
Global stock markets bounced back in July, especially in Europe, as concerns over the debt crisis eased. European-equity-focused hedge funds missed out on much of the market rally, however. The Morningstar Europe Hedge Fund Index increased 5.6 per cent, while the MSCI Europe NR Stock Index rose 11.6 per cent.
"Confidence returned to the markets in July," says
Moody Aldrich Partners, a privately held investment firm in Boston, has reached an agreement with Wilshire Funds Management, a business unit of Wilshire Associates, to assist in the development of its open architecture hedge fund seeding platform called MAP Harvest Fund.
Wilshire will assist with key aspects of the platform including investment manager and operational due diligence, risk management, separate account platform services and distribution support.
MAP Harvest Fund is a private equity fund that provides acceleration capital to promising, newly independent hedge fund investment teams. The Harvest team, with input from Wilshire, acts as an adviser to its
Long/short equity strategies appear to offer an alternative investment opportunity for equity investors versus long-only investing, a paper by Credit Suisse says.
Given the current market environment and persistent uncertainty faced by investors, Credit Suisse believes that L/S equity funds can offer a better risk/return opportunity versus long-only equity funds, as well as potentially improved downside protection.
While investing in hedge funds does pose some inherent risks, long/short equity strategies can provide broad equity exposure with additional return opportunities, making them an important core holding, the paper states..
L/S equity strategies, as represented by the Dow Jones Credit Suisse Long/Short
The Way Group has launched the Absolute Return Portfolio Fund, one of three new investment funds to use a new tiered performance fee structure.
Way Absolute Return Portfolio Fund follows the recently launched Way Freestyle Growth Portfolio Fund, and will be followed this month by the Way Asian Spice Portfolio Fund.
Manager Roderick Collins, founding member of Hasley Investment Management, will head up the fund.
It will invest in quoted hedge funds and investment trusts of hedge funds deploying a range of strategies as well as in some distributor status hedge funds and the growing range of absolute return
Tim Levy, chief executive of GBP6bn alternative investment firm Future Capital Partners, is about to embark on a expedition led by Bear Grylls through the Northwest Passage.
Future Capital’s investment partnership Future Fuels, which will fund the construction of a renewable fuel plant in the UK, is sponsoring the expedition.
The 14 day trip will raise awareness of the effect of climate change on the planet and raise money for UK charity Global Angels, providing safe drinking water for thousands of children in Africa.
The expedition through the formerly frozen Northwest Passage will begin on 28 August in Pond Inlet
