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An increase in client redemption requests is threatening the viability of even the most well-managed hedge funds, according to a white paper published by Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, and Aite Group.
The paper, Fueling Growth: Outsourcing Solutions for Hedge Funds, says many fund managers are taking action by reassessing their overall investment strategies and evaluating their relationships with key service providers, such as those with prime brokers, fund administrators and information technology companies.
It says hedge funds must consider a multitude of factors to help make an informed decision on establishing an outsourced vendor relationship, including cost, evaluating disparate
Long/short equity hedge funds ended the third quarter in positive territory as improving global macroeconomic data continued to suggest an economic recovery, according to data from Credit Suisse.
September marked yet another positive month for long/short equity hedge funds as managers posted their highest third quarter returns in four years. Not surprisingly, the majority of gains came from the long side of their books as managers continue to capitalize on global equity rallies.
The Credit Suisse Long/Short Equity Replication Index was up 1.02 per cent (net) for the month, finishing up 4.60 per cent for the third quarter.
By contrast,
Media finance and consulting firm Noci Pictures is in discussions with US and international private equity partners in closing a USD300m dollar structured media and entertainment fund that would finance 20 to 30 films.
The firm says many hedge funds, including New York’s Elliott Associates, are seeing premium returns from investing in film and media.
"As a non correlated asset class, films and film finance has outperformed every non correlated asset class in the world," says Yuri Rutman, head of media finance and consulting firm Noci Pictures. "If you look at the more than USD6bn poured into motion picture finance
Castlestone Management, the alternative New York and London asset manager, has made direct, unleveraged exposure to physical gold bullion and precious metals available to euro and sterling investors in its Aliquot Gold Bullion and Aliquot Precious Metals Funds.
Euro and sterling investors will now have direct, unleveraged exposure to physical gold or precious metals prices without the worry of currency movements undermining their investments.
Gold and precious metals investing has become increasingly popular since the onset of the financial crisis and in light of their strong price performance in the last year. Gold and precious metals both proved their value
Acero Capital Management has appointed Ralph A. Shaoul as chief financial officer.
Shaoul joins Acero from Blavin where he spent five years serving in various capacities including chief financial officer, chief administrative officer and compliance officer.
Prior to Blavin, Shaoul spent four years with Gilbert Global Equity Partners as the controller and six years with Soros Fund Management as a senior accountant and operations manager.
“We are extremely fortunate to attract someone of Ralph’s calibre to our team. Ralph has extensive experience running the back office at highly respected institutions, and has an impeccable reputation among his former colleagues,” says
The S&P GSCI increased 0.17 per cent in September led by strength in the precious metals sector, according to Standard & Poor’s.
The S&P GSCI Precious Metals Index increased 6.49 per cent in September and has returned 16.19 per cent for the year.
Year-to-date, the S&P GSCI is up 4.68 per cent.
Energy was little changed in September, but the S&P GSCI Energy Index decline of 4.07 per cent acted as the biggest index drag during the quarter.
The S&P GSCI Industrial Metals Index, the best performing sector in 2009 with a year-to-date return of 56.83 per cent, gained
Tokyo Stock Exchange has launched Tdex+ System, a trading platform for options contracts.
Tdex+ System is an electronic trading system based on Liffe Connect, which is used by NYSE Liffe.
It aims to improve order processing performance to six milliseconds of order response and about 20 thousand transactions per second.
In addition, TSE has also introduced the market maker scheme for all listed options contracts. Multiple market makers have started to quote, bid and offer continuously for options on JGB Futures and Topix options and equity options.
Atsushi Saito, president and chief executive of Tokyo Stock Exchange, says: “Today’s launch
Ounavarra Capital has appointed Laurence B. Siegel as a senior adviser.
Siegel (pictured) will continue as research director of the Research Foundation of CFA Institute.
He was most recently and since 1994, the director of research in the investment division of the Ford Foundation. He was part of a team of six senior professionals managing their USD10bn endowment fund, which is invested in stocks, bonds, real estate, private equity, and hedge funds.
Before that, he was a managing director of Ibbotson Associates, an investment consulting firm that he helped to establish in 1979.
Siegel also chairs the investment committee of
Asian institutions are joining their peers in other markets by refraining from making wholesale changes to their portfolio investment strategies in the wake of the global financial crisis.
However, the results of Greenwich Associates’ 2009 Asian Investment Management Study reveal that institutions across Asia (excluding Japan) are reconsidering plans to outsource more of their assets to external investment managers after a year in which many managers fell far short of performance expectations.
Among Asian institutions, average fixed income allocations increased to 68.6 per cent of total assets in 2009 from 62.5 per cent in 2008, while overall equity allocations dropped
The European Life Settlement Association has spoken out against recent media speculation that life settlements are tipped to become the new vogue for securitization, following the failure of ill-fated US mortgage-backed products.
Reports have suggested that credit reference agencies have been inundated with requests to review various life insurance based packaged securities, yet the major banks remain tight-lipped.
Others have suggested that life settlements will disrupt the primary life insurance market as insurers depend on a level of lapsed or surrendered policies.
Life settlements are US life insurance backed investments, and relate to unwanted policies which have been sold
