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Singapore-based investment firm Wilkinson Bennings is expanding its staff and resources to accommodate an increase in demand for alternative investments.
Wilkinson Bennings has hired 12 additional staff and will expand its trading floor by 30 per cent to accommodate the increased business.
The last major hiring period for the firm was in 2008 when it beefed up its fixed income department by 28 per cent.
Hedge funds as measured by the Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index cut net exposures and limited the losses experienced by markets in June.
The index shed 0.84 per cent compared to losses of 5.23 per cent by the S&P 500 Total Return, 3.56 per cent by the MSCI World Equity and 5.23 per cent by the FTSE 100.
Forty two per cent of constituent funds in the Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index ended the month with gains.
Market neutral funds posted a modest loss in June, falling 0.33 per cent on average as funds showed mixed results among strategies.
The
GSO Capital Partners, the credit business of The Blackstone Group, has held the final closing of the Blackstone/GSO Capital Solutions Fund with total commitments of over USD3.25bn.
The fund’s strategy is focused on providing privately negotiated capital solutions to companies in need of liquidity or significant capital structure transformation due to pending covenant violations, debt maturities, cyclical downturns in their businesses or other funding requirements.
The strategy leverages GSO Capital Partners’ distressed, credit and trading expertise, along with its deal origination capabilities.
Thus far, the fund has invested approximately USD600m in seven different companies.
Bennett Goodman, senior managing director of
SEI, a provider of outsourced asset management, investment processing and investment operations solutions, has selected financial software specialist Comada to enhance the risk management services that will be delivered to the company’s investment manager clients via SEI’s Total Liquidity Management tool.
The partnership, announced this week by Comada co-founders Rupert Vaughan Williams and Dave Shastri, will see the implementation of Comada’s M.A.T.ware risk management capabilities into SEI’s operations platform to further enhance SEI’s outsourcing services for hedge funds and funds of hedge funds.
Vaughan Williams says: "SEI was particularly interested in working with us to address increasingly important liquidity issues
Otkritie, a brokerage that provides direct market access to Russian equity markets, has launched a trading platform that aims to provide greater transparency and cost efficiencies for international investors trading directly into Russia.
The new platform, which is backed by an international custodian, allows the straight through processing of electronic orders onto MICEX and settle into a third party custody account.
The platform eliminates the requirement for investors to pre-deposit their assets with the executing broker or pay for financing while enabling them to use one of the largest custodian banks in Russian equities markets.
Up until now, the most
SEI has launched a front-office liquidity management tool that allows its asset manager clients to continuously track, analyse and manage the portfolio positions of their funds as well as investor redemption provisions.
Amid the credit crisis and the resulting mass redemptions over the past several years, managers are demanding a more transparent and holistic view of their liquidity position.
SEI’s new Total Liquidity Management enhances SEI’s hedge fund and fund of hedge funds outsourcing platform by meeting this industry demand and helping clients better forecast and manage their cash flows.
Total Liquidity Management leverages technology from Comada, and
Investors have turned bearish in their outlook for the global economy and corporate earnings, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch survey of fund managers for July.
The survey shows a net 12 per cent of respondents predicting the global economy will deteriorate in the coming 12 months, the first negative forecast since February 2009.
This represents a big turnaround from June when a net 24 per cent forecast the economy to strengthen.
A net four per cent of the panel expects corporate profits to worsen in the coming year, also the first negative outlook in more than a year.
Altin, the Swiss alternative investment company listed on the London and Swiss stock exchanges, has increased its exposure to event driven managers from 12.14 per cent to 18.58 per cent.
The company added two new event driven funds, reflecting the growing opportunity set available to managers active in this strategy.
The portfolio’s largest strategy allocation, equity long/short, was slightly reduced and accounts for 29.15 per cent of the portfolio, while multi-strategy exposure remained relatively stable and totalled 18.17 per cent.
The macro strategy allocation accounts for 19.51 per cent of the portfolio and credit accounts for 10.70 per cent.
On
GLC has deployed the latest release of ProFundCom’s hedge fund marketing platform to improve its marketing and investor relations processes.
The new release of ProFundCom has given a new dimension to the marketing intelligence that is available for hedge fund and asset management marketing teams.
Damien Lipman, project manager at GLC, says: "ProFundCom’s new release has extended our ability to be more efficient and goal focused with our marketing as well as provide valuable feedback to our board of directors and our marketers."
"The new analysis of email and marketing engagement available in ProFundCom further improves the marketing process," says
Newedge’s suite of hedge fund indices all posted negative results for the month of June.
The Newedge CTA Index fell 0.19 per cent in June (+1.75 per cent year-to-date), while the AlternativeEdge Short-Term Traders Index fell 0.05 per cent (+0.83 per cent YTD), the Volatility Trading Index fell 1.06 per cent (-6.77 per cent YTD) and the Macro Trading Index fell 0.24 per cent (+1.43 per cent YTD).
The Newedge Macro Trading Index (Quantitative) was down 0.25 per cent in June (+2.45 per cent YTD) and the Macro Trading Index (Discretionary) was down 0.24 per cent (+0.96 per cent YTD).
