Altman Leads Hedge-Fund Managers Betting Stock Rally to Continue (SFGate)
Jeff Altman and John Paulson, two of last year’s best-performing hedge-fund managers, are predicting that stocks will continue their rally in 2014 even as the bull market approaches its sixth year. They’re among a number of top money managers betting markets are robust enough to weather a gradual reduction in the pace of the Federal Reserve’s asset purchases as the central bank signaled it will keep interest rates at their current low for the foreseeable future, according to interviews with more than half a dozen investors…
Global Hedge Fund Giant Sells UK’s TDX (HedgeCo)
The $10.5 billion global hedge fund investor, Investcorp, is selling the UK’s largest debt placement services and debt management platform company, TDX, to Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX), a global information solutions provider, for £200 million ($327 million). Through its technology fund, Investcorp Technology Partners III, Investcorp acquired a substantial minority stake in TDX in 2008, becoming the largest and only institutional shareholder alongside TDX’s three founders. “With our support, TDX has been able to realise its potential and has evolved from being a UK-focused operation to one with a growing international footprint.
Goldman Sachs Alumni Said to Open Japan Hedge Fund by March (SFGate)
Golvis Investment Pte, founded by three former Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS) managing directors, plans to open its Japan-focused multistrategy hedge fund to investors this quarter, said two people with knowledge of the matter. Golvis Asia Opportunities Fund returned almost 2 percent in the first two weeks of January, said the people, who asked not to be identified as the information is private. It started trading early this month with money from the Singapore-based company’s founding partners and employees. Ryan Collins, Golvis’s head of business development, declined to comment on the fund as it is private.
Shorts set to pounce as U.S. stocks seen pricey (TheGlobeAndMail)
After years of hiding under their desks, short sellers are re-emerging – slowly. Investors who make a living betting that stock prices will fall are happy to forget 2013: The S&P 500 gained nearly 30 per cent while Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS)’s index of hedge funds with a dedicated short bias lost 25 per cent. …Jim Chanos, president and founder of Kynikos Associates and one of the most prominent short sellers, said the market is primed for people like him and as a result he has gone out to raise capital. “Now I think is not a bad time to be raising capital for what we do. When we got a rough going in the mid-90s, that was exactly the time to raise capital,” Chanos said, adding it was better to do this when critics viewed him as “like the village idiot and not an evil genius.”
Hedge fund flow forecast to hit pre-crisis peak (AsianInvestor)
Institutional investor flows into hedge funds globally are set to hit highs not seen since before the global financial crisis, according to a survey of asset owners. It comes as the survey from Barclays Capital Solutions Group found that among regional institutions, Asian pensions led the pack when it came to hedge fund allocations in 2013, investing $108 billion throughout the year. Private banks followed at $105 billion. Looking ahead, hedge funds are forecast to receive institutional flows of $80 billion in 2014, the highest level since 2007, marking a rebound for an industry that has been “under a bit of a cloud” since Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008, the survey finds.
UniCredit hands off risk to US fund Mariner Investment Group (FT)
A New York hedge fund group has persuaded US pension funds to take on some of the risk of lending to Italian infrastructure projects, in what it says could be a model for bringing new capital into the European economy. UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank by assets, will announce on Wednesday that it has done a deal with Mariner Investment Group to offload some of the default risk on a €910m portfolio of lending to energy and transport projects. The deal frees up capital that the bank would otherwise have to hold against the loans.
