Archive for September, 2009

Hedge fund manager Richard Bookstaber will be speaking at is year’s HedgeWorld Fall Conference. He is the author of “A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation,” a book that pinpointed the market weaknesses that spun out of control to create today’s financial crisis.

“A Demon of Our Own Design” ranked number one on Amazon in finance and was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Loeb Award. Bookstaber was named to this year’s Conde Nast Portfolio list of top 25 technical innovators, joining the ranks of Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Eric Schmidt.

He has testified before the House and Senate, calling for greater transparency and improved regulation for Wall Street long before it was fashionable. BOOKSTABER recently worked at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund, and before that ran the Quantitative Equity Fund at FrontPoint Partners.

He was in charge of risk management at Moore Capital Management, another hedge fund with over $10 billion in assets. He served as the managing director in charge of firm-wide risk management at Salomon Brothers and was a member of Salomon’s powerful Risk Management Committee. Bookstaber also spent ten years at Morgan Stanley, first designing and marketing derivative instruments, then as a proprietary trader, and concluding his tenure there as Morgan Stanley’s first market risk manager. In addition to A Demon of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007), he is the author of three other books and scores of articles on finance topics ranging from option theory to risk management. He has won the Graham and Dodd Scroll from the Financial Analysts Federation and the Roger F. Murray Award from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance for his research. Bookstaber has a Ph.D in Economics from M.I.T.

The conference is being held at the Metropolitan Club in New York on October 6th, 2009.

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The Dreyfus Corporation, part of BNY Mellon Asset Management, announced the introduction of the Dreyfus Satellite Alpha Fund and the Dreyfus Diversified Global Fund.

“Many individual investors are seeking a professionally managed solution that enables them to invest in non-traditional asset classes that have low correlations to traditional asset classes, especially in the wake of the recent financial crisis,” said Phil Maisano, Vice Chairman and Chief Investment Officer for Dreyfus and Chief Investment Strategist for BNY Mellon Asset Management. “Dreyfus Satellite Alpha has been constructed within a 1940-Act platform to provide exposure to non-traditional asset classes such as commodities, currencies and real estate in addition to inflation-protected securities and global stocks and bonds.

“Dreyfus Diversified Global fund is distinctive among global funds; the underlying funds are managed by an array of BNY Mellon Asset Management affiliates with different points of view and investment philosophies which differentiate this fund from other global funds that only deliver a single viewpoint,” Maisano said.

The Dreyfus Corporation, established in 1951 and headquartered in New York City, is one a leading asset management and distribution company, currently managing more than $400 billion in mutual funds and separately managed accounts.

BNY Mellon Asset Management is the umbrella organization for BNY Mellon’s affiliated investment management firms and global distribution companies.

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“Because the funds were already scheduled to be collected, banks will be able to treat this assessment as a prepaid expense on the asset side of the balance sheet. In other words, the banks will pay the cash today but will reflect it in earnings over the next three years.”
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” According to Nielsen, CNBC’s annual decline in total September viewership was a massive 37%: the worst YoY performance in 2009. The decline in the demo audience also hit a high of 27%.”
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” The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority won government approval for the proposal it announced this March, expanding the Trade Compliance and Reporting Engine, it said in a statement. The regulator is “actively” considering whether to seek permission to add other debt, Steven Joachim, Finra’s executive vice president for transparency services, said in an interview.”
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” House Oversight Chair Who Had Countrywide VIP Loans Makes Mockery Of Congressional Investigation.”
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“…, the Obama Economic Team, under the leadership of Larry Summers, is grasping at stimulus and aids programs like bank capital asset subsidies that as part of a total package might be useful, but as remedies applied to a sick system do not promote a cure, but merely serve to mask the symptoms.”
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” Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross said on Tuesday he has teamed up with Starwood Capital Group to bid on the assets of failed Corus Bank, while a source said Related Companies had also made an offer.”
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Number of New Hedge Funds Rises

Number of New Hedge Fund Launches Increases

With 2,100 hedge funds closed during the credit crisis, few expected a rise in new hedge fund launches this year.  But if new hedge funds continue to launch at this year’s pace, the industry may see the first year since 2005 of annual growth in new fund formations.  Hedge funds appear to be back with renewed investor confidence and new and experienced hedge fund managers ready to try it again.  Hedge fund launches have been consistently falling from 2073 in 2005 to 659 last year but this trend appears to be reversing.

It might also be that funds that had posted huge losses closed down so that the managers could start with fresh records, resetting high-water marks so that they can collect performance bonuses without making up the money lost in 2008.

When Hedge Fund Research unveiled its second-quarter data earlier this month, all eyes were focused on the slowing number of hedge fund liquidations. What was little noticed were the hedge fund launches. Since 2005, they have been falling steadily from a peak of 2073 in 2005 to 659 last year. The slide appeared to be continuing in the first quarter when 148 new hedge funds were launched. But, in the second quarter, 182 new hedge funds were launched, just as the equities markets bottomed.

The rising launches are a “constructive development,” says Ken Heinz president of Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research. “You are continuing to see risk tolerance and risk appetite improving from the historical lows at the end of 2008. ” To be sure, there are still more hedge funds shuttering their doors than opening them, with 292 going out of business in the second quarter alone, according to Hedge Fund Research. But there have been some notable launches.  Source

Related to: Hedge Fund Launches

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Tags: New hedge fund launches, hedge fund launches rise, more hedge fund launches, number of hedge fund launches rise, hedge fund launches 2009, new hedge funds, starting a hedge fund, start up

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Hedge fund prime brokers Northern Trust and Merlin Securities have set up an agreement which enhances Merlin’s existing broker-dealer custody relationships with Goldman Sachs Execution and Clearing and J.P. Morgan Clearing Corp. Merlin’s clients now have easy access to all three providers through Merlin’s award-winning multi-prime reporting platform.

“In today’s market, managers and investors are seeking custodial solutions that reduce their counterparty risk and provide fully integrated, multi-custodian reporting analytics and risk data,” said Stephan Vermut, Founder and Managing Partner of Merlin. “Our agreement with Northern Trust addresses this need for our clients and grants seamless access to a bank custody provider with an unparalleled reputation for quality, safety and stability.”

“Northern Trust is delighted to add Merlin and its clients to our growing hedge fund custody and administration business – which now provides asset servicing for more than $90 billion in assets worldwide,” said Peter Cherecwich , Chief Operating Officer for Corporate and Institutional Services at Northern Trust. “Merlin’s technology, risk analytics, and multi-custody reporting capabilities are a strong complement to Northern Trust’s hedge fund services.”

As of June 30, 2009 , Northern Trust had assets under custody of US$3.2 trillion, and assets under investment management of $558.9 billion.

Merlin Securities has offices in New York and San Francisco and is a member of FINRA and SIPC. Recognized as the #1 prime broker for funds less than $1 billion by Alpha magazine’s 2008 hedge fund service provider survey for the second year running Merlin was the top-ranked non-algorithmic-driven firm and second overall among brokerages trading NYSE stocks as measured by arrival price, according to the 2008 Elkins/McSherry annual transaction cost survey.

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