Hedge Fund News: Mick McGuire, Paul Singer, Warren Buffett

Avenue Capital Said to Join BlueMountain in TP Ferro Debt Talks (Bloomberg)
Avenue Capital Group LLC and BlueMountain Capital Management LLC are leading a group of hedge funds in talks about restructuring TP Ferro Concesionaria SA’s debt, according to two people familiar with the situation. Owners of the high-speed rail link between Spain and France are seeking to reorganize 445 million euros ($505 million) of debt before it matures on March 31, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is private.

Former RBC Capital Markets Boss Standish Joins Hedge Fund (Reuters)
Mark Standish, the former co-chief executive of of RBC Capital Markets, has joined Deimos Asset Management as a managing partner. The Canadian bank announced that Standish was leaving the bank last week, leaving his co-head Doug McGregor in sole charge of the investment bank. Deimos Asset Management is the new name of Guggenheim Global Trading, a hedge fund previously owned by Guggenheim Partners that has been bought out by management. Deimos will retain the previous senior management team of GGT, led by Loren Katzovitz and Patrick Hughes.

Lone Pine Alum Scott Phillips Said to Start Hedge Fund Latimer (Bloomberg)
Scott Phillips, who spent almost a decade working at Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital, is joining a small group of managers who have recently left the industry’s most successful hedge funds to run their own firms. Phillips, 35, a former managing director at Lone Pine, is starting Latimer Light Capital to make bets on and against stocks of primarily U.S. companies, according to two people with knowledge of his plans who asked not to be named because the information is private. The firm will begin trading in the second half of this year.

West Midlands Pension Fund Joins Hedge Funds Exodus (Reuters)
The UK’s West Midlands Pension Fund is in the process of withdrawing its hedge fund allocations of just over 200 million pounds ($300 million), becoming the latest institution to end the use of these relatively expensive and complex products. The local government pension scheme fund, which manages more than 10 billion pounds ($15 billion), gave no reason for the move. The near $3 trillion global hedge fund industry has seen large pension funds such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the PFZW in the Netherlands pull out in the last year, citing high costs, complexity and poor performance.