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Securities and Exchange Commission chair Gary Gensler says hedge funds must face closer scrutiny following the recent turmoil in US government bonds, according to a story by the Financial Times.
With regulators having focused largely on the investment bank sector in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, Gensler believes taming the risks stemming from speculative funds and other non-bank financial institutions was now “more important than ever.”
He said he wanted a better understanding of how bets by often highly-levered asset managers, including hedge funds, can reverberate across asset classes and into the real economy.
“We just had
London-based activist hedge fund Bluebell Capital Partners has criticised Glencore for “a lack of strategic thinking” as it campaigns for the mining conglomerate to spin-off its thermal coal business, according to a story by the Financial Review.
In a letter to Glencore’s board, Bluebell said that “shareholders, us included, would be reasonable in their criticism of this short-sightedness, complacency, and lack of strategic thinking for not spinning off thermal coal in a timely manner”.
Bluebell Capital believes Glencore has wasted 18 months arguing about the proposal before capitulating as part of a takeover of Teck Resources.
Bluebell Capital is a
Hedge funds are betting the US dollar’s recent stretch of weekly declines – the longest in almost three years – is set to reverse, as investors ramped up pricing for Federal Reserve rate cuts, according to a report by Bloomberg.
New Commodity Futures Trading Commission data shows leveraged funds were net short all major currencies against the dollar last week for the first time since January 2022.
While investors’ overall stance on the US currency remains bearish, the optimism among hedge funds potentially reflects receding concern over the impact of the banking crisis on the Fed’s willingness to battle inflation.
West coast activist hedge fund Phase 2 Partners is targeting UK-listed asset manager Jupiter Fund Management, according to a report by The Times. Financial Conduct Authority disclosure data shows the San Francisco-based hedge fund is now a leading short-seller of Jupiter.
The US group has built a net short position of 0.59 per cent in shares of the London-listed asset manager.
Phase 2 is one of three hedge funds that have built short bets against Jupiter that are larger than the 0.5 per cent threshold required for investors to disclose their positions to the regulator.
Phase 2’s negative wager comes as
High-profile hedge fund manager Crispin Odey has halved his bearish position in Metro Bank since December, but remains the lender’s largest short-seller, according to a report by the Mail on Sunday.
Odey’s fund has held a negative wager in Metro Bank for a number of years, but the company now holds a “relatively unimportant” position in the portfolio, due to a low price and lack of liquidity in its shares, Odey told the Mail on Sunday.
Odey – whose holding now amounts to about 2 per cent of the shares available, worth almost £4 million – remains Metro’s largest short-seller.
Hedgeweek exclusive: Asset management is on the threshold of deploying investment strategies using next-level AI. Patrick Ghali (pictured), Managing Partner of investment consultant Sussex Partners, gives his thoughts on how best to prepare investors.
US-based multi-strategy managers dominate a new ranking of 64 investment firms managing $10 billion or more in hedge fund assets.
Four of the top ten firms on the inaugural ‘$10bn+ Power List’ from Alternative Fund Insight (AFI) specialise in multi-strategy hedge fund vehicles, including Miami-headquartered Citadel and New York-based Millennium Management.
Collectively, the wider group of 64 firms manages $1.75 trillion, around 44% of the hedge fund industry’s $4 trillion total AUM.
The AFI ranking, based on reporting and publicly available data and as of the start of 2023, is topped by Westport, Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates – retaining its long-held
BlackRock’s assets under management increased to $9.1 trillion during Q1, but net income fell 19% over the past year, as the fund management giant saw hedge fund fees tumble sharply amid squeezed margins and subdued markets, according to a report by the Financial Times.
Overall, revenue fell 10% year-on-year to $4.2 billion, with performance fees on its hedge funds and other alternative investment offerings decreasing more than 40% to $55 billion, BlackRock said on Friday.
Net income fell 19 per cent year on year to $1.1 billion, or $7.93 a share, and ahead of the $7.67 expected by analysts polled by
Global Futures and Options, a digital assets-focused platform co-led by Arnab Sen, founder of Hong Kong-based hedge fund Harbour Capital Management, has teamed with the London Stock Exchange to launch a clearing service for crypto index futures and options trades.
GFO-X, which is licensed by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority, is a start-up platform aimed at global institutional investors who want to trade digital asset derivatives.
LSEG’s Paris-based LCH SA clearing unit will introduce a new, segregated clearing service, DigitalAssetClear, for cash-settled dollar-denominated digital assets traded on GFO-X.
The new service is expected to launch in Q4 this year, pending
Man Group said in a note this week that commercial real estate could be the next sector to come under pressure following the recent banking crisis, noting small and medium US lenders – which are under closer scrutiny following Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse – account for the bulk of commercial property loans.
In the latest ‘View From The Floor’ market commentary, analysts at the London-listed global hedge fund giant pinpointed two main reasons for commercial real estate potentially being the next domino to fall.
“First, small- and medium-sized banks – that make up the bulk of US lenders – account
