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Law firms Hogan & Hartson and Lovells and completed the combination of their two firms.
The partners of both firms voted to combine the businesses in December 2009.
Hogan Lovells as more than 40 offices throughout the world, including associated offices in Croatia, Hungary and Saudi Arabia.
Warren Gorrell (pictured) and David Harris, co-chief executive officers, said the combination will offer clients expanded global capabilities.
“Hogan Lovells will afford clients a multi-national capability with an unmatched quality, range, and depth of legal services. We are confident that with our breadth of practice, deep industry knowledge, and one-team approach worldwide, Hogan
Jeremy Stretch will be joining CIBC’s macro strategy team in late July as executive director and head of FX strategy.
Stretch joins from financial services firm Rabobank.and has over 15 years’ experience in FX and fixed income strategy.
He will be based in London and will focus primarily on developing tactical trade ideas involving major currencies, as well as on cross-product analysis, for internal users and CIBC clients.
He will report to Joanna Zapior, who leads the macro strategy team from Toronto, and locally to Mark Sweeting, European head of the financial solutions group.
Donald A. Steinbrugge (pictured), Managing Member
Agecroft Partners, LLC, predicts that United States public pension funds will increase their allocation to hedge funds at a faster rate than corporate pension plans due to sweeping new corporate pension legislation that is just beginning to take hold in the industry.
The new legislation does not directly impact public pension funds. Corporate pension fund allocations have historically targeted a higher risk and return profile than public pension funds, but that may be changing due to the passage of the 2006 Pension Protection Act that became effective in 2008.
This was the most dramatic
Jersey is the only offshore centre to place in the top 20 of global finance centres in an industry listing.
Jersey took 18th position in the listing of global financial index centres published in March.
The listing is produced every six months by the City of London and examines the major financial centres globally in terms of competitiveness, using a set of ratings and rankings for each jurisdiction based on responses to a global survey.
Jersey was ahead of every other international finance centre in nine of the ten sub-indices including the availability of skilled personnel, the flexibility of the
Private equity firm The Carlyle Group has agreed to purchase the management contracts on USD5.1bn in collateralised loan obligations and other credit assets from Stanfield Capital Partners, a fixed income asset manager based in New York.
The transaction, part of a broader strategy to expand the scope and depth of Carlyle’s global credit alternatives business, would increase credit AUM to USD18.1bn from its current USD13bn.
Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to investor consent and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2010.
Mitch Petrick, Carlyle managing director and head of the global credit
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has issued an order filing and simultaneously settling charges that Moore Capital Management and its affiliates attempted to manipulate the settlement prices of platinum and palladium futures contracts on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The CFTC also filed and settled charges that Moore Capital failed to diligently supervise the handling of its commodity interest business.
The CFTC order requires Moore Capital Management and Moore Capital Advisors, both based in New York, and Moore Advisors, a Bahamian entity, jointly and severally to pay a USD25m civil monetary penalty and restricts their registrations as commodity pool
C.P. Eaton Partners has launched a platform to enable all of its current and future general partners access to RMB capital sources within mainland China.
In conjunction, C.P. Eaton has hired Eric Gu as vice president to lead the effort from the firm’s Shanghai representative office.
C.P. Eaton is developing the RMB fundraising capacity for both western-based fund managers and Chinese domestic fund managers in the alternative investment space.
The firm believes interest in RMB funds will continue to grow given the ongoing development of China’s capital markets and the anticipated strengthening of the RMB against the US dollar.
Barclays Capital Fund Solutions says its Research Analysis Driven Absolute Return strategy is now available on Nucleus.
The addition of Radar, a long short macro tactical asset allocation strategy, to the Nucleus wrap is part of an ongoing initiative to open up this fund to a wider market.
Radar, which was designed to exceed global equity returns in a bull market and also outperform tactical allocation funds during bear markets, recently celebrated its first anniversary with a return of 29.7 per cent net of fees having recorded ten positive months.
The strategy has USD105m under management.
Nathan Bance, director in
Lyxor Asset Management and Martin Currie have launched the Lyxor/Martin Currie China Dragon Fund.
The fund is a non-benchmarked long/short strategy available exclusively through Lyxor and Martin Currie.
Martin Currie manages USD4.7bn in dedicated Greater China strategies. The company has a China team of 13 analysts and portfolio managers based in Edinburgh and Shanghai.
The fund’s manager, James Chong, has over 15 years of investment experience and currently manages over USD400m across China multi-cap products.
Allan MacLeod (pictured), managing director of sales, marketing and client services at Martin Currie, says: “The fund has run as a model portfolio since February
Polar Capital’s healthcare investment team believes AstraZeneca’s results are evidence of the growing importance of emerging markets in the healthcare sector.
AstraZeneca reported year-on-year growth of 19 per cent in emerging markets, and Polar Capital says this growth opportunity will be an important contributor going forward.
Over the next ten years it is estimated that emerging markets will add USD400bn to USD500bn to global pharmaceutical sales.
Currently, emerging markets’ spend on healthcare is much lower than developed markets but this is changing as economic wealth in these countries is growing at a much faster rate and emerging markets pharmaceutical sales
