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BMO Capital Markets, the investment and corporate banking arm of BMO Financial Group, has signed a definitive agreement with Greenwich, Connecticut-based Paloma Securities to hire its global securities lending team and acquire assets used in its securities lending business.
Paloma Securities has offices in Greenwich, New York, Seattle, London and Melbourne, Australia. It is a subsidiary of the Paloma Funds.
"Expanding our securities lending operation fits with our strategy of disciplined growth that focuses on our core clients," says Tom Milroy (pictured), chief executive of BMO Capital Markets. "The addition of this lending team from Paloma Securities complements our existing
The RBC Hedge 250 Index had a net return of -0.25 per cent in October, bringing the year-to-date return of the index to 17.20 per cent.
These returns are estimated and will be finalised by the middle of next month. The return for September 2009 has been finalised at 2.25 per cent.
The best performing strategy in October was fixed income arbitrage, which returned +2.75 per cent. Also posting positive results were convertible arbitrage (2.16 per cent), credit (1.54 per cent), multi-strategy (0.62 per cent) and macro (0.25 per cent).
However, equity market neutral (-0.41 per cent), equity long/short (-1.60
Cyrus Capital Partners has extended its enhanced USD250m offer to finance Ion Media Networks’ exit from bankruptcy protection.
The Cyrus offer, which was summarily rejected by the Ion Networks’ board, provides Ion with USD100m of additional incremental capital not offered in the plan accepted by the board.
The extension will run until the bankruptcy court finally accepts or rejects the financially inferior offer now before the court.
The disclosure was made in a letter sent today to the Ion Networks’ board by Jonathan Jackson, an adviser to Cyrus on minority ownership of broadcast assets, and Cyrus’s lead co-investor in this
Tetragon Financial Group has entered into a definitive agreement with Calyon to acquire Lyon Capital Management and certain collateralised loan obligation securities.
LCM was established by Calyon, the corporate and investment bank of Credit Agricole Group, as an asset manager in 2001 and currently has approximately USD2.5bn of loan assets under management.
It is intended that the existing LCM management team will continue in their current roles.
Paddy Dear, a director of Tetragon and a principal of Polygon Credit Management, the investment manager of Tetragon, says: “We are very excited about the opportunity to bring LCM, a profitable operating business,
Interdealer broker Icap produced a profit of GBP166m in the half year to 30 September 2009 before taxation, amortisation and impairment of intangibles arising on consolidation and exceptional items.
This represents a five per cent drop from a profit of GBP174m in 2008.
On a statutory basis, profit before taxation was GBP139m for the half year ended 30 September 2009 (2008: GBP148m).
Group revenues rose by six per cent to GBP809m. Electronic revenue of GBP122m produced an operating profit of GBP47m.
On an underlying basis, revenue fell by nine per cent and operating profit by 24 per cent.
The group’s
Hedge funds registered a 0.20 per cent loss in October, according to the Barclay Hedge Fund Index compiled by BarclayHedge.
“Prior to October’s loss, the Barclay Hedge Fund Index gained 21.96 per cent during seven consecutive months of positive performance,” says Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge.
“It was the best return for a string of winning months since the 18-month period from October 2002 through March 2004, when the index gained 25.80 per cent.”
Eleven of Barclay’s 18 hedge fund indices lost ground in October, while the seven other strategies gained nearly equal value.
Equity long bias fell
Institutions and financial advisers continue to view alternative investments optimistically, despite their questionable performance, correlation and liquidity during last year’s global downturn, according to a survey by Morningstar and Barron’s.
The majority of participants to the survey said they plan to increase allocations to alternatives, but with greater scrutiny and due diligence given to those investments.
More than 60 per cent of institutions and advisers believe that alternatives will be as important or more important than traditional investments over the next five years.
The majority of institutions and advisers expect alternatives to account for more ten per cent of their
Standard Bank has launched currency reference warrants in response to the growing popularity of currency trading in South Africa.
Brett Duncan, director of equity derivatives at Standard Bank, says: “CRWs, which are listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, enable investors to trade currency as an asset class to protect themselves or take advantage of movements of the South African rand.”
Leanne Parsons, chief operating officer at the JSE, says: “CRWs extend our currency product offerings and will be incorporated amongst the existing warrants traded. They will be traded on the traditional equity market. The warrant market has grown significantly in
Hermes Fund Managers has made a step forward in its development to become a multi specialist asset manager with the recruitment of a global equities team.
Joining from Fortis, the Boston-based team of six is led by Lode Devlaminck and John Chisholm and has an average of 19 years of investment experience.
The recruitment of the team will provide Hermes with the expertise to build a core active global equity business which will be structured as a specialist investment partnership.
Hermes will own the majority share but the partners and employees will have a stake in both the long-term profitability
New Trend Fund Management, a Cayman Islands based investment manager, is launching its first hedge fund, the New Trend US Equity Fund.
The fund aims to produce high absolute returns over each market cycle using a trend following long/short strategy.
The strategy is driven by an algorithm, removing the challenges of human biases. It identifies promising investments using an automated process to screen for trending US stocks.
The portfolio, when fully invested, will hold 30-50 active positions with no more than ten per cent held in a single position.
The fund is managed by Steven Granot and Marc von Rohr.
