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The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has potentially large implications for the energy sector with the cost of the spill being estimated at USD32.2bn, according to ETF Securities.
With current International Energy Agency estimates putting offshore production at around half of oil production towards 2015, and if the US tightens regulations on offshore oil drilling and other countries follow suit, the implications for longer-dated oil prices and the alternative energy sector could be significant.
Daniel Wills, senior analyst at ETF Securities, says: "The BP oil spill cannot be looked at as a one-off isolated event. The spill
Battenkill Capital Management, a Princeton, New Jersey-based investment adviser, has been engaged as a sub-adviser by Hatteras Alternative Mutual Funds, a provider of alternative investment mutual fund products.
Battenkill will employ its market neutral strategy on behalf of Hatteras, which is located in North Carolina.
"Battenkill will primarily utilise pairs trades, combined with overlay directional trades," says Rick Franzen, the portfolio manager at Battenkill. "Our trading focuses on an investment universe of companies within the energy, industrials and basic materials sectors which we have been covering in many cases for over a decade."
Battenkill was founded in 2007 and its
Offshore law firm Appleby has appointed Christian Victory as an associate in its funds and investment services team.
Victory, who joined Appleby from William Fry in Dublin, transfers from the firm’s British Virgin Islands office where he advised clients on the formation, establishment and listing of mutual funds and hedge funds.
He also has experience in banking and finance, general lending, debt issuance and corporate and commercial law.
His arrival comes after six months of growth by the Cayman Islands funds team. Partner Richard Addlestone joined in January 2010 with over 16 years’ corporate, private equity and hedge funds experience
The average price for assets on the secondary hedge fund market rose to 78 per cent after shaking off some of the fallout from May’s European debt crisis, according to Hedgebay’s June index.
Investors’ confidence was shaken by the damage caused by the Greek crisis, and saw the average price for hedge fund shares drop to an all time low.
Although the average price shows that secondary users continue to be wary of paying too much for assets, the rise does indicate an upturn in confidence.
The eight per cent rise in the average price has been helped by trading
FRM Capital Advisors, the hedge fund seeding division of Financial Risk Management, and Varna Capital have formed a relationship which involves FRM making a significant investment in Varna’s first fund.
Varna is a newly formed hedge fund manager based in New York and headed by Svetlana Lee.
Lee, together with the Varna team, previously managed an equity long-short fund at Citadel’s PioneerPath new manager platform. Prior to that she gained investment experience at hedge funds Greenlight Capital, The Baupost Group and Perry Capital.
Varna will implement a value-focused, equity long-short strategy that seeks to exploit event-driven situations, structural market dislocations
Alpha Strategic, which delivers hedge fund fee revenue to the public market, saw its revenue rise to GBP441,000 in the year ended 31 March 2010 from GBP342,000 at 31 March 2009.
This follows the announcement in July 2009 that Alpha Strategic had signed an agreement to access revenues from IKOS Asset Management’s G10 currency fund.
Net assets increased by 23 per cent to GBP3.2m from GBP2.6m in 2009.
Colin Barrow, chairman of the company, says the net asset figure would have been higher were it not for the requirement under IFRS for it to amortise the income guaranteed from the
Sascha Bloemhoff has been appointed as managing director of Climex, a pan-European organisation which provides a marketplace for trading and auctioning environmental commodities and energy contracts.
Bloemhoff takes over the position of Axel Posthumus who was the founder of Climex in 2003 and has been in charge since.
Bloemhoff has been the commercial director of Climex since 2005.
This management change is a part of the change in shareholder structure announced on 27 May during Carbon Expo in Cologne.
The Morningstar 1000 Hedge Fund Index fell 0.3 per cent in June, ending the quarter with a 3.6 per cent loss and down 2.2 per cent for the year to date.
The currency-hedged Morningstar MSCI Composite Index also dipped slightly in June, by 0.2 per cent, finishing the quarter down 1.5 per cent.
Losses in May dragged quarterly results down for almost every hedge fund strategy, particularly the equity strategies. Global equities tanked in the wake of Europe’s debt crisis, uncertainty regarding financial regulation, and disappointing economic indicators in the US.
Hedge funds held up better than the unhedged markets,
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed an enforcement action charging Chicago-based New World Holdings with destroying business records and failing to diligently supervise employees.
New World Holdings is a registered introducing broker and commodity trading adviser.
The firm’s principal Steven David Erdman and its branch manager Grace Elizabeth Reisinger are charged with aiding and abetting New World Holdings’ failure to keep proper business records. Erdman is also charged with failing to diligently supervise employees.
The CFTC complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, alleges that, from at least 10 March 2006 to
Global Investment House says the Global Distressed Fund was ranked sixth in the fund of funds – distressed securities/event driven category for May 2010 by BarclayHedge.
Joseph Joseph (pictured), the head of hedge funds at Global, says: “The Global Distressed fund continues to outperform its peers and its continuous recognition by BarclayHedge, a leading alternative investment database is quite an achievement. The Global Distressed Fund is one of the flagship products managed by the Global hedge funds team and we are proud of its performance over its eight year history.”
Joseph says the spreads which were available during 2009 and
