Glenwood
The story of Glenwood is really the story of how a pioneer in Chicagos nascent fund of hedge funds sector turned his start-up into an institutional-grade fund of funds, a firm that is now an integral part of one of the largest hedge fund groups on the planet. Frank Meyer, the pioneer in question, is certainly highly spoken of around the alternative investment community in Chicago. > read more
Commentary
Après moi le déluge?
Over a 36 hour period starting at six oclock on the morning of Friday 14th March I was invited twice to appear on television, and asked to write no less than five articles for different publications. As readers will be well aware, this had nothing to do with me having suddenly developed a winning nature and film star good looks (I had these already, of course) but with the fate of Bear Stearns following rapidly upon the sudden demise of Carlyle Capital Corporation.
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Manager Writes
Carbon Nation
he green house gas markets are an emerging and rapidly growing asset class. Although these markets are only recently emerging, they are developing rapidly and global interest is increasing daily. As we enter Kyoto Protocols first official commitment period, there are still a handful of uncertainties surrounding these emerging markets: Has the EU adjusted their allocation models appropriately to avoid another April 2006? Then, the price of emissions plummeted nearly 65%, as a response to the announcement that the EU had over allocated allowances, creating an oversupplied market.
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Research
Institutional Assets
Of the 6,000 reported funds of hedge funds globally, between two thirds and half that figure appear to correspond to share classes and clones, leaving around 2500 genuine funds of hedge funds. Overall, estimates suggest that about $800bn to $1,000bn of hedge fund assets are managed through funds of hedge funds.
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Profiles
Morley Fund Management: Shahid Ikram
The arc of Shahid Ikrams career reflects the increasing sophistication of managing fixed income in an institutional context. He started as one of a team of four managing fixed income at Commercial Union (CU) in 1990. Today the Head of Sovereign & G7 funds at Morley, Avivas UK-based asset management business, is part of a cadre of 56 fixed income research and portfolio management professionals. Ikram himself has stayed put, but the firm has grown around him through takeover and merger (eg. General Accident, Provident Mutual and Norwich Union) such that parent company Aviva is the largest UK insurer and the fifth largest insurance group in the world.
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Opinion
Structured Products
Up to last year, most people regarded valuation as a necessary but unexciting aspect of running an investment operation. Spotting future price changes was the skill to which traders aspired, not the humbler job of correctly measuring todays price.
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Technical
Gibraltar
The hedge fund industry in Gibraltar has grown in leaps and bounds over the last couple of years. Gibraltar, which is part of the EU, has staked its claim as an efficient hedge fund centre that is open for business. It operates within a regulated fund regime that is in tune with the requirements of the modern hedge fund industry and is not only attractive as a domicile and servicing centre for alternative funds but could also lead to hedge fund managers choosing Gibraltar as a base for their operations.
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Commentary
RMF Investment Letter
A difficult start to the year for all asset classes continued into February. Global equity markets were negative with the MSCI World LC Index down -1.9%. However, performance was mixed with Asia ex Japan up most, while the US was the worst region as US stocks fell for the fourth straight month. Europe and Japan were flat to negative.
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Opinion
Short Selling
This elusive group of short investors have taken the blame for many of the crashes of the last 400 years; from the East India Company of 1609, the Great Wall Crash of 1929, Black Monday in 1987 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble in the early-2000s. Short sellers have been labelled as stock-bashing rumour mongers (Albert et al, 1997) and the assassins of Corporate America (Business Week, 1996).
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Also in this Issue
Valuations
he problems surrounding hedge fund valuations are not new and have already been taken up by organisations including AIMA, the Hedge Fund Working Group and the International Organisation of Securities Commissions Organisation (IOSCO).
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Opportunistic Managers
May you live in interesting times, goes the often-quoted Chinese proverb and curse. But many opportunistic hedge fund managers wouldnt see things that way; volatility, uncertainty, greed and fear are the very conditions that their strategy thrives on conditions wholly evident in todays financial markets.
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Asia
Japan boasts the second largest economy in the world. Its equity market, despite almost two decades of under performance and false dawns, is still the second largest in the world after the USA.
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Credit Crunch
The fact that the credit crunch has resulted in major financial woe for a significant number of financial institutions has been widely publicised, as has its dramatic impact on businesses reliant on the wholesale market for credit, such as Northern Rock, the UK bank.
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FAIFs
Following the introduction of funds of hedge funds and commercial property into the FTSE APCIMS (private clients investment indices produced by the FSTE) there has been a growing appetite for alternative investment vehicles.
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Investment Outlook
Two centuries ago, the Governor of the Bank of England set monetary policy by the weathervane that stands atop its elegant headquarters.
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A Flexible Approach to Risk Management
Last year was a wake-up call, if one was needed, that more hedge funds and their investors needed to be paying closer attention to their risk management capabilities.
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Prime Brokers and Hedge Funds
Until recently, large investment banks with significant prime broker units were happy to allow some elements of the business to run as a loss leader for the accolade of having the big hedge fund names as their clients, particularly if they could claim sole prime broker status.
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Hedge Fund Evolution in a Demanding Environment
A year ago, few would have predicted that the investment landscape would change quite so dramatically for hedge funds as it has over the past twelve months.
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Hedge Fund Regulation
The last few years have emerged as a pivotal time in the evolution of hedge fund regulation. In early 2006, the industry scrambled to comply with a deadline requiring hedge fund managers to register with the SEC.
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Systematic Trading
Given the recent turbulence in global capital markets and difficulties in certain hedge fund sectors, it is refreshing to see that trading strategies are enjoying strong performance.
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A Rough Start to the Year for Long/Short Funds
n this article, we explore what factors have been driving the recent poor performance in long/short funds. We focus on two subgroups of these fundslong bias (directional funds) and no bias (non-directional funds).
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Africa
We are in a period of major re-assessment of the values by which we live. The value of the US dollar is plummeting, inflation is rearing its ugly head in developed markets and more and more investors are seeking protection from those events by investing in what they feel will keep its value such as commodities.
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