Tiger Management Backing New Asia-Focused Hedge Fund (WSJ)
Julian Robertson‘s Tiger Management LLC has agreed to back startup hedge-fund Kang Global Investors LP with as much as $50 million for its launch at the start of July, according to people familiar with the arrangement. In exchange for the early investment, the new hedge fund’s founder Richard Kang will pay about 20% of fees earned to Mr. Robertson’s Tiger in what is known as a “seed deal,” the people said. The New-York based Kang Global will be an Asian-focused fund, similar to Mr. Kang’s former employer, the shuttered hedge-fund Tiger Asia Management.
Hedge Funds Lag S&P 500 MTD (Finalternatives)
Hedge funds lag the S&P 500 Index month to date, with the Diversified Investible Hedge Fund Composite Index up 0.8% to the broader index’s 1.7% as of June 18. Event-driven funds performed the best, said Bank of America Merrill Lynch analyst MacNeil Curry, adding 1.2% over the monitored period. Curry said BofAML models indicate market neutral funds trimmed their market exposure to 10% net long from 17% net long while long/short funds trimmed their exposure to 43% net long from 50% net long, above the 35-40% benchmark.
Argentina seeks debt talks to avoid default (GlobalPost)
Lawyers for Argentina were planning to meet with a New York judge Monday to seek a way to avoid defaulting on billions of dollars worth of debt on June 30. Cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich said the legal team would make a formal presentation for talks with creditors to Judge Thomas Griesa, who first ruled against the country in its battle against hedge fund bondholders in 2012. But Griesa’s court was not able to confirm any meeting was scheduled early Monday.
Hedge Fund Loses Millions In Hacking Attack (Key103)
In a rare raid on the financial services sector, the criminals delayed the fund’s trades whilst stealing their profitable company secrets. BAE Systems Applied Intelligence said the attack cost the unnamed fund millions of dollars and the identity of the attackers is still unknown. It is understood the attackers lifted information on complex, high-speed trades from the firm, then sent the details to external servers using malware which was installed on the victim’s network.
SEC Charges Hedge Fund Advisory Firm and Others in South Florida-Based Scheme to Misuse Investor Proceeds (NewsRoomAmerica)
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based hedge fund advisory firm and its founder with fraudulently shifting money from one investment to another without informing investors. The firm’s founder and another individual later pocketed some of the transferred investor proceeds to enrich themselves. The SEC alleges that Weston Capital Asset Management LLC and its founder and president Albert Hallac illegally drained more than $17 million from a hedge fund they managed and transferred the money to a consulting and investment firm known as Swartz IP Services Group Inc…
Pot start-ups pitch to angel investors (CNBC)
Investors prefer high-quality hedge funds over high returns (BenefitsCanada)
The majority of hedge fund investors are not looking for double-digit returns from their hedge fund investments. A Preqin survey finds that 67% of institutional investors look for annual returns between 4% and 6% while just 6% of investors seek returns of more than 10%. Investors are looking for their hedge fund portfolios to produce returns uncorrelated to equity markets (59%), produce robust risk-adjusted returns (53%) and dampen portfolio volatility (46%).
Argentina May Play For Time With Payment To Holdouts (Finalternatives)
Argentina is prepared to offer hedge-fund holdouts from its 2001 default as much as US$400 million in exchange for more time to hammer out a final deal, one of the country’s leading newspaper reports. The U.S. Supreme Court last week refused to accept Argentina’s appeal of lower-court rulings ordering it to pay the hedge funds, led by Elliott Management and Aurelius Capital Management, US$1.5 billion or risk defaulting on its restructured debt. Argentina has continued to talk tough on what it calls the “vulture investors”—with full-page advertisements in The New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal this weekend—but also said it plans to hold talks with the hedge funds for the first time…
Falcone’s Harbinger Group Offers to Buy Central Garden and Pet (NYTimes)
The Harbinger Group, the publicly traded holding company run by the hedge fund manager Philip A. Falcone, has offered to buy the Central Garden and Pet Company for $10 a share. The offer, for Central Garden’s Class A and Class B shares, represents a premium of 11 percent from Friday’s closing stock price and is 27.5 percent above where the shares were trading on June 6, before Harbinger disclosed that it had taken a stake of more than 4 percent in Central Garden and was seeking a dialogue on “strategic alternatives.”
Hedge Fund and ValueVision Shopping Network Settle Differences (NYTimes)
After a seven-month battle, the activist hedge fund Clinton Group and the Internet and shopping network ValueVision Media have settled their differences. ValueVision announced a new chief executive officer and a new board of directors on Monday. Mark C. Bozek, a former chief executive of the Home Shopping Network, will take the helm of the company as Keith R. Stewart steps down. Robert Rosenblatt will take over as nonexecutive chairman, succeeding Randy S. Ronning.
Man Seeding Chief Out (Finalternatives)
Patric de Gentile-Williams, the head of seeding at the Man Group’s fund of hedge funds arm, has left the firm. De Gentile-Williams took his exit last month, after seven years at FRM—which Man acquired in 2012, five years after he was named chief operating officer of its seeding business, FRM Capital Advisors. Previously, he founded hedge fund incubator PCE Investors. Man, which recently acquired U.S. fund of funds Pine Grove Asset Management, will not name a successor to de Gentile-Williams, although Financial News reports that it will continue seeding nascent hedge funds.
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