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Prime Fund Solutions has been named the Best Hedge Fund Administrator 2010 at the inaugural Hedgeweek awards.
The award was presented to Charlie Woolnough, European regional director, at a ceremony in London’s West End on 19 March.
The judging process for the awards followed a meritocratic approach, with Hedgeweek sending out a survey to all 56,000 of its subscribers and receiving back over 1,000 responses. The winners were chosen by the number of positive responses received for each category.
Prime Fund Solutions was considered to be the “best” hedge fund administrator by more Hedgeweek subscribers than any other firm.
Global
The Lyxor Hedge Fund Index recorded a positive performance of 2.12 per cent in March 2010.
The top performing strategies over the month were CTAs long term (+4.84 per cent), L/S credit arbitrage (+3.85 per cent) and fixed income arbitrage (+2.73 per cent).
The worst performing strategy was L/S equity short bias, which fell by 6.58 per cent.
The Lyxor Hedge Indices are investable, asset-weighted hedge fund indices. They are based on Lyxor’s hedge fund platform that covers all the major hedge fund strategies.
The HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index gained 2.7 per cent in March, the highest gain since September 2009.
For the quarter the index gained 2.56 per cent.
Equity hedge funds posted the strongest gains across four main strategies, with a gain of 3.53 per cent, the strongest since May 2009. Gains were broad based across nearly all sub-strategies and were strongest in growth and quantitative equity.
Event driven continued its strong performance with its 13th consecutive positive month, gaining 2.96 per cent. With the benefit of improving credit markets and liquidity, event driven is the top performing strategy YTD, gaining
Xtrakter, the fixed income specialist, has launched an over-the-counter liquidity service called XVOL.
XVOL provides access to a range of liquidity and volume data to assist users in better determining the liquidity of differing OTC fixed income securities.
XVOL offers fund, risk and performance managers the ability to determine the liquidity of differing fixed income securities they may currently hold or be monitoring.
It provides subscribers with the total volume figure for each security traded in the preceding month and a unique flag indicating the level of trading in each listed security within pre-defined bands.
The service is based on
The Hennessee Hedge Fund Index advanced 3.05 per cent in March, bringing the return for the year to date to 3.50 per cent.
The S&P 500 increased 5.88 per cent in March (4.87 per cent YTD), while the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 5.15 per cent (4.11 per cent YTD) and the Nasdaq Composite Index advanced 7.14 per cent (5.68 per cent YTD).
Bonds fell slightly, as the Barclays Aggregate Bond Index decreased 0.12 per cent (+1.78 per cent YTD).
“The financial markets seem to have quickly forgotten about sovereign risk and concerns about central bank exit strategies. Investors remain
Dow Jones Indexes has launched the US Contrarian Opportunities Index.
The new rules-based index seeks to measure a "contrarian" investment strategy by focusing on companies with strong recent fundamentals but a lagging three-year-trailing return.
The index has been licensed to Javelin Investment Management to underlie an exchange-traded fund. The ETF will be available at NYSE Euronext.
"The Dow Jones US Contrarian Opportunity Index allows market participants for the first time to track a contrarian investment strategy with a rules-based tool," says Michael A. Petronella (pictured), president designate, Dow Jones Indexes. "The Dow Jones US Contrarian Opportunities Index is designed to
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission has obtained more than USD3.9m in restitution and civil monetary penalties in a federal judgment order against CSA Trading Group and Michael Derrick Peninger, both of Charleston, South Carolina, in a CFTC anti-fraud action.
The order stems from a CFTC complaint filed in 2008, charging CSA and Peninger with fraud and misappropriation in a USD1m commodity pool scam.
The order requires CSA and Peninger to pay, jointly and severally, approximately USD1.5m in restitution and USD2.4m in civil penalties.
The order also permanently bars them from engaging in any commodity-related activity, including trading, and from
Deutsche Bank has added Doug Kline to its global prime finance business within the global markets division as a managing director and head of hedge fund consulting.
Kline is based in New York and reports to Pam Kiernan, managing director and global head of business development, and Scott Carter, managing director and head of global prime finance sales and capital introduction in North America.
In this role, Kline will oversee the continued expansion of global prime finance’s hedge fund consulting practice, which advises existing and start-up hedge fund managers on the infrastructure and processes required to support human and investment
ESAF – Espírito Santo International Management has launched a new fund of Ucits III funds.
It has designated BAF (Blue Activos Financeiros – SGP) as investment adviser of the fund.
The Luxemburg fund, called Dynamic Alpha Portfolio Ucits III, is an active managed portfolio of Ucits III alpha funds.
Its objective is to provide investors with capital growth, mainly by investing in units of Ucits III offering different strategies. The investment philosophy is to deliver a positive performance regardless of market conditions.
The target return is Euribor 3M plus four to eight per cent. The target volatility is less than
LCH.Clearnet has received approval from the UK Financial Services Authority to extend its interest rate swap clearing service, SwapClear.
Buy-side firms can now access the service through clearing members based in Ireland and Switzerland.
The extension means that institutional investors are able to clear through members based in six countries: the US, the UK, France, Germany, Ireland and Switzerland.
LCH.Clearnet is regulated in the UK by the FSA and in the US by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Its SwapClear service offers protection to buy-side clients in the event of a default of a clearing member, through margin segregation and
