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RBC Capital Markets has named Blair Fleming head of US investment banking, based in New York.
Fleming will oversee RBC Capital Markets’ investment banking businesses in the US, which includes corporate finance industry groups, mergers and acquisitions, leveraged finance and restructuring.
Throughout his 20-plus year career with RBC, Fleming has held numerous senior roles in the firm’s global investment banking and global debt markets businesses, including his most recent responsibilities as the head of global syndicated and leveraged finance and global infrastructure.
"Blair’s long career with RBC, diverse business background and deep client relationships make him a natural fit to
Gottex Fund Management, an alternative asset management group, integrated the Constellar fund of funds into the Gottex product range.
Ted Wong, founder and chief executive of Constellar Capital, will join Gottex.
As from February 2010, Gottex will take over the investment management of the three Constellar fund of hedge funds: the broadly diversified Gemini Funds (US onshore and offshore) and the Constellar Asia Fund.
These funds had approximately USD150m in assets under management as at 31 December 2009.
The more directional Constellar funds will broaden Gottex’s product offering in the US onshore as well as in the offshore sector,
Asset Control, a provider of financial data management solutions, enjoyed a record year for client signings in 2009 and completed a programme of new products and enhancements.
The firm added more new clients in 2009 than any other year on record since it was founded in 1991.
Among the new clients signed in 2009 were Ping An Insurance (Group) of China and Investment Technology Group.
Asset Control is expanding its team and operations to support its growing customer base.
The firm completed a programme of product enhancements in 2009 designed to help customers meet the challenges of pricing and
Managed futures lost 1.43 per cent in December and CTAs ended the year down 0.10 per cent, according to the Barclay CTA Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
Six of Barclay’s eight managed futures indices were down in December. Diversified traders lost 2.08 per cent, systematic traders fell 2.05 per cent, and financial and metals traders slid 1.32 per cent.
“The sell-off in global fixed income futures, coming on the heels of November’s rally, caught many trend traders off balance and helped to set the stage for a down month,” says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge.
“The currency markets saw
Kathryn Latti has joined Kinetic Partners as a consultant in the area of forensics and corporate recovery.
Her areas of specialty include managing investigations, large-scale fraud engagements, insolvencies, and other litigious situations.
Prior to joining Kinetic Partners, Latti spent two years with PricewaterhouseCoopers’ investment management assurance practice.
Latti is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in the state of New York and earned a M.S. in Business Administration with a concentration in accounting at the University of Colorado.
Kinetic Partners New York offers forensic investigations, operational risk consulting and regulatory and compliance guidance to the global asset management industry.
Kinetic Partners
In December, the stock market ended the year with another gain of 1.93 per cent and implied volatility of 21.68 per cent was at its lowest level since May 2008, according to a report by Edhec Risk Institute.
With a remarkable annual return in 2009 of 26.5 per cent, the S&P Index recovered half the losses of the disastrous previous year which saw a loss of 37.0 per cent.
On the bond market, regular bonds registered their first loss since February, down 1.63 per cent, but remained at a higher level than their pre-crisis peak of February 2008.
On the
Financial services firm Capstone Holdings Group has hired Heiko Ebens as global head of research.
Ebens (pictured) joins Capstone after seven years at Merrill Lynch, where he last served as a managing director and head of global equity derivatives research overseeing a 15-member team.
Ebens’ team built the firm’s research-driven structured product platform which raised USD13.6bn in assets.
“Drastic changes in volatility have brought our expertise to the fore, and the need to produce high quality idea generation and product offerings is paramount. We are very excited to have Heiko join us as it marks a significant step forward
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
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