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Panthera Solutions, an alternative investment consultancy in Monte Carlo, is offering its European customers premium access to the world’s most renowned hedge funds.
Until now, investing in top managers was almost impossible for smaller insurance companies, regional banks and HNWIs.
Unattractive cost ratios and unreachably high minimum investment hurdles banned this group from accessing the best.
Panthera Solutions has opened the gates for this group and is offering cost-efficient access to managers such as John Paulson, Brevan Howard and DE Shaw.
Instead of common minimum investment hurdles between EUR5m and EUR25m, Panthera Solutions enables investors to buy the top managers
Gain Capital, a provider of online trading services, has launched a foreign exchange trading platform that provides qualifying financial institutions, hedge funds, CTAs, high frequency traders, broker/dealers and high net worth individuals access to FX liquidity sources.
Gain’s GTX trading platform is a fully anonymous trading environment that offers direct access and trade execution capabilities via streaming prices or request-for-stream with a transparent view of both price and order book depth.
The company’s two main solutions are GTX Prime to Prime, for companies with pre-existing credit with a prime broker, and Gain Capital Direct Prime, for those without pre-existing relationships.
Over 70 per cent of AlphaClone’s 3,100 simulated hedge fund clone portfolios beat the S&P 500 market index in 2009, with over half outperforming by ten percentage points or more.
Leveraging the publicly disclosed stock picks of the world’s top hedge fund managers, AlphaClone created a series of passive investment strategies that seek to systematically capture alpha typically only available to high-net-worth investors.
These cloning strategies performed particularly well in 2009 compared to the US market, as represented by the S&P 500.
The year’s best-performing single fund clone was the Eagle Value Partners clone, which garnered a total return of
Deutsche Bank’s London-based prime brokerage platform has obtained a Type 1 SAS 70 certification.
The certification was completed by PricewaterhouseCoopers and provides an independent assessment of Deutsche Bank’s internal processes and controls.
The scope of the SAS 70 also incorporated Deutsche Bank’s asset segregation platform, Deutsche Bank Integrated Prime Custody.
SAS 70 allows service organisations to disclose their control activities and processes to their customers.
Anthony Byrne (pictured), Deutsche Bank’s co-head of European prime finance and global head of securities lending, says: “We are proud to be taking a leading position on the effectiveness and transparency of our control environment
The Alternative Investments Conference organised by the London School of Economics private equity society and financial markets group has attracted unprecedented interest among students and financial institutions with over six top-level students competing for each place available.
Despite the fact that the global economy and the financial markets are still recovering from the crisis, interest from top universities and business schools worldwide is stronger than ever.
2009 was marked by one of the worst financial crises since the Great Depression, challenging investors’ confidence in many ways, and having a knock-on effect on recruitment campaigns by asset management companies across the
Fidessa, a provider of trading solutions for the buy-side and sell-side, has added nine brokerage firms offering US options execution services to its connectivity network.
This follows the launch of Fidessa’s integrated options and equities trading platform for the sell-side in the US in October 2009.
Ballista Securities, Barclays Capital, BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, ConvergEx Group’s LiquidPoint, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, OnPoint Executions and Penson Financial Services are now all available on the Fidessa network to offer options execution services.
These services encompass high-touch, DMA and algorithmic trading services, and are all fully integrated within the Fidessa options and
Law firm Walkers has appointed Carol Hall as head of its newly-formed investment funds group in Hong Kong.
Hall has more than 17 years’ experience in mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance and investment funds, including 11 years specifically in Hong Kong.
She specialises in hedge funds and private equity funds and has led the development of Walkers’ hedge funds practice in Hong Kong since joining as a partner in 2005.
Hall will be supported in her role by partner Denise Wong who has a focus on hedge funds, private equity funds and all areas of corporate transactions.
"Asia and Hong
Investors have rediscovered their risk appetite and are putting cash reserves to work across the equity markets, according to the BofA Merrill Lynch survey of fund managers for January.
For the first time since January 2006 the survey shows investors are taking above average risk, relative to their benchmark.
A net two per cent is taking “higher than normal” risk, compared with a net seven per cent taking “below normal risk” in December. These figures follow several months of investors displaying optimism about the economy but maintaining a more cautious risk and investment profile.
Average cash balances have fallen
Triple A Partners, an Asian and emerging markets alternative fund company in the seeding and distribution business, will partner with Sparx Asset Management to help it develop and supplement its marketing and distribution activities outside of Japan.
With its regulatory licences in Hong Kong, the US and the UK, Triple A Partners can offer Sparx global marketing support outside of Japan.
Sparx is an independent investment company headquartered in Tokyo with assets under management of approximately USD2.8bn, in traditional long-only and alternative products primarily focused on Japanese equities.
Whilst global interest in investing into Japanese markets has been lacklustre in
Hiroshi Yoh, CIO at Tokio Marine Asset Management (London), the Japanese and Asian equities specialist, reveals his outlook for Asia ex-Japan equities in 2010.
Our prediction that the global economy would begin its recovery during H2 2009 has proved to be accurate – China’s economy bottomed during the first quarter of 2009, followed by the manufacturing centres of Taiwan and Korea and financial centres of Hong Kong and Singapore during the second quarter while the US registered positive quarterly GDP growth in the third quarter.
After contracting an estimated 1% in 2009, the global GDP is now expected to
