Latest News
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation has hired Andrew Douglas to lead its public affairs efforts in Europe.
Douglas will play a key role in representing DTCC’s public policy positions to officials of the European Union and its member states.
He will also represent DTCC in dealings with other European organisations, such as regulators, central banks and industry associations.
Douglas will be responsible for communicating DTCC’s European policy agenda and for building upon existing relationships with key individuals and groups in the public policy-making process.
In addition, he will represent DTCC at relevant forums, advise senior management on pending legislation
Revere Capital Advisors has formed an equity partnership with Statistical Research Laboratory, a UK based technology company focused on providing the asset management industry with greater transparency.
Revere, a New York, London and Singapore based investment group and hedge fund platform, says the purchase reflects its commitment to provide investors with state of the art technology and operational infrastructure.
Nexus is a fully integrated investment platform providing improved investor transparency and ownership of data, allowing institutions to analyse and evaluate all of their holdings together. It provides an independent audit trail of investment activity, communications and regulations and compliance.
Dan
Over March all hedge fund strategies except equity market neutral (-0.02 per cent), fixed income arbitrage (-0.10 per cent) and option arbitrage (-0.06 per cent) finished the month in positive territory, with the Lipper Hedge Fund Composite Index returning a healthy 0.78 per cent.
Managed futures (+1.96 per cent) was the best performing strategy for the month, followed closely by emerging markets (+1.75 per cent) and long bias (+1.56 per cent).
Global stock markets edged up 6.25 per cent for March as measured by the MSCI World TR Index. In the US the stock market registered a 6.03 per cent
PerTrac Financial Solutions, a provider of analytic and workflow solutions, has launched PerTrac RiskPlus, a returns-based risk analysis solution.
The new product is a collaboration with FinAnalytica, a provider of real world portfolio risk solutions for multi-manager funds, hedge funds and asset management firms.
“PerTrac RiskPlus is a breakthrough for hedge fund investors seeking more sophisticated risk monitoring for their portfolios,” says Gerry Mintz, PerTrac president and chief executive officer. “Using state-of-the-art statistics based on fat-tailed distributions, dynamic correlations and multi-factor models, PerTrac RiskPlus sheds light on opaque portfolios at a price far less than more traditional or position-based risk
SkyBridge Capital has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the fund of hedge funds, hedge fund seeding and hedge fund advisory businesses from Citi Alternative Investments, with total investments under management and advisory of USD4.2bn.
SkyBridge says the transaction will position it as one of the leading global alternative asset managers with a total of USD5.6bn in assets under management and advisory.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The businesses are part of Citi Holdings, the segment which contains Citi’s non-core assets and businesses.
The sale is consistent with Citi’s strategy to reduce non-core assets, tightly manage risks
March 2010 was the best month in the last ten for hedge funds and pushed the HFN Hedge Fund Aggregate Index to a new peak, surpassing the prior peak level set in October 2007.
Performance was strong in March and net investor flows were again positive, but below the high rate in February.
Positive returns were driven primarily by rising equity markets and supported by strong moves in energy and other major commodity prices.
Emerging market funds appear to have performed best, led by managers investing in Russia and the Middle East/North Africa region.
The HFN Hedge Fund Aggregate Index
NYSE Arca Europe will admit US equities to its trading platform when it launches the components of the S&P 100 Index for trading during the second quarter of 2010.
EuroCCP will offer clearing services for these securities with settlement taking place via EuroCCP’s account at The Depository Trust Company, the US central securities depository and subsidiary of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation.
This service will provide trading firms the first-ever opportunity to trade US securities on a European platform during European trading hours with settlement at DTC.
Initially, S&P 100 stocks will be admitted to the platform; however, further
Fortis Bank Global Clearing Asia Pacific has launched a network that enables algo traders, market makers and hedge funds to access multiple exchanges via proximity and collocation data centres from one single point of entry.
FBGC Asia Pacific worked over a 12 month period to devise the network to encompass over 12 different data centres in the Asia Pacific including official collocation and proximity exchange data centres in Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Osaka.
In Hong Kong considerable expense was invested to produce a data centre to harness a location as close to the exchange as possible.
Best of breed providers
The Conifer Group has completed a corporate reorganisation that results in a separation of the broker/dealer and fund administration businesses.
United under The Conifer Group, the affiliated entities are Conifer Fund Services and Conifer Securities.
The Conifer Group is a provider of middle office solutions, trading, prime brokerage and fund administration services to the hedge funds industry.
“Our focus continues to be on providing the most comprehensive suite of services for the hedge fund industry. Our business has steadily grown in terms of clients’ assets and complexity of products we support. As demand for customized solutions has grown,
Registered investment adviser Wexford Capital has outsourced fund administration to SS&C Fund Services, an independent fund administrator.
SS&C was selected as the administrator of record for all four of Wexford’s hedge funds in August 2009.
The new mandate was a result of Wexford’s decision to provide additional transparency into the pricing of their portfolios for their investors.
SS&C independently reviews Wexford’s internal accounting records and monthly performance results and verifies Wexford’s monthly reconciliations and investment valuations.
SS&C also provides all transfer agency and shareholder services to Wexford’s investors.
A client since 1994, Wexford also uses SS&C’s portfolio and partnership accounting
