Investors Pull More Money Away From Hedge Funds

Investors took more money away from hedge funds in July when they asked for $7.4 billion back, underscoring their frustration with an industry that has long promised to make money in all markets but is currently delivering only middling returns.

Reported by Svea Herbst-Bayliss, July’s redemption requests were up sharply from the $4.2 billion pulled out in June, according to data released by BarclayHedge and TrimTabs Investment Research on Tuesday.

That leaves hedge funds industry assets at roughly $1.87 trillion, down 23 percent from their peak four years ago before the financial crisis hit, the research report found.

“We’ve seen a notable reversal in hedge fund industry fortunes during the past year,” said Sol Waksman, founder and president of BarclayHedge.

This is troubling news in an industry dwarfed in size by the mutual fund industry but able to attract some of the world’s savviest investors with the promises of big paychecks and more investing freedoms. Similarly big name investors including pension funds and wealthy individuals have long been attracted to hedge funds because their managers can short, or bet against a security, thereby having more tools at their disposal to deliver better returns.

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Former Hedge-Fund Exec to Pay $2M Fine

A New Jersey hedge fund executive plans to settle up with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Commission announced last week that the onetime chief investment officer and portfolio manager for the Clay Capital Fund, and his former firm, have agreed to pay $2.1 million for their part in an insider trading scheme.

Reported by Ricardo Kaulessar , Clay Capital consented to pay $850,000, without admitting or denying the Commission’s allegations, while Turner acquiesced to a $1.25 million payment.

Turner is currently serving a one-year prison sentence for a scam that resulted in Turner and his co-conspirators gaining nearly $3.9 million in illicit profit. He was also sentenced to three years supervised release and fined $25,000.

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Chart of the Day: Hedge funds’ changing investor base

The half-yearly report on possible systemic risk created by hedge funds was published last week, and identifies the sources of investment in the industry. It found that pension funds have increased their share, representing 23% of the investor base in March 2012, up from 17% a year earlier [see chart].

As reported by Harriet Agnew, High-net-worth individuals and family offices, meanwhile, decreased their share of the investor base to 12% from 15% over the same period. The regulator collected data on funds with a total of more than $380bn under management, which represents just under a fifth of industry assets.

The results chime with other surveys, and reflect an increasing institutionalisation of the hedge fund industry over the past decade which has gathered pace since the financial crisis. According to Deutsche Bank, institutions – including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and endowments – now account for approximately two thirds of hedge fund assets, compared with less than one fifth in 2003.

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Paulson to Talk With BofA

Bank of America Corp.’s wealth-management arm will host a conference call Tuesday with Paulson & Co.’s John Paulson, offering some of its financial advisers and their clients a chance to grill the struggling hedge-fund manager, people familiar with the matter said.

According to David Benoit and gregory Zuckerman of the Wall Street Journal, the call comes within days of the decision by a major Paulson client, Citigroup Inc.’s private bank, to stop investing with Mr. Paulson’s firm. That move is expected to lead to withdrawals of about $410 million.

Bank of America’s wealth arm, which includes its Merrill Lynch retail brokerage and U.S. Trust private-client business, had arranged …

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Knight Is Said To Have Spurned $500 Million Citadel Loan

Knight Capital Group Inc. (KCG) rejected a last-minute, $500 million rescue-loan offer from Citadel LLC on Aug. 5 as it worked on a competing plan from a group of investors, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

The loan terms would have given Citadel a minority stake inJersey City, New Jersey-based Knight’s stock and an interest in the market maker’s HotSpot foreign-exchange subsidiary, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks were private. Citadel, the $12.5 billion hedge fund run by billionaire Ken Griffin, competes with Knight’s market-making and electronic-trading business.

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RBS’s CEO Blames Libor-Manipulation On ‘Handful’ Of Individuals

Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Stephen Hester sought to limit the damage from the Libor-rigging scandal, blaming a “handful” of employees for attempting to manipulate the benchmark rate.

RBS dismissed four employees for trying to influence the individual responsible for Libor submissions following an internal investigation, the bank said today, without identifying the staff involved. Hester said it is too early to estimate the potential cost of fines and litigation linked to rate-rigging.

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Standard Life’s Grimstone Says Libor Scandal Is Hurting London

London’s reputation as a global financial center has been marred by the Libor-rigging scandal, said Gerry Grimstone, chairman of Standard Life Plc (SL/), Scotland’s largest insurer.

He was speaking on Bloomberg TV’s “The Pulse” show with Maryam Nemazee in London.

On London’s reputation after the Libor scandal:

“I’ve been in the financial services for 30 years and I’ve never known a time like this. It’s been terrible. Some of the language people use has been terrible. I’m concerned that the public don’t really understand it. The public talks about hanging bankers. We shouldn’t use words like cesspit to describe the City of London.”

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Fed’s Rosengren Urges ‘Open-Ended’ Easing Program

Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren said the central bank should pursue an “open-ended” quantitative easing program of “substantial magnitude” to boost growth and hiring amid a global slowdown.

The Fed should set its guidance based on the economic outcomes it seeks and focus on buying more mortgage-backed securities, Rosengren said today in a CNBC interview. Without new stimulus, the jobless rate would rise to 8.4 percent at the end of this year and economic growth wouldn’t exceed its 1.75 percent average in the first half of the year, he said.

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U.S. Stocks Rise On Policy Bet As Earnings Beat Estimates

 

U.S. stocks advanced, sending the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index higher for a third straight day, amid better-than-estimated corporate earnings and speculation global central banks will take steps to boost economic growth.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Bank of America Corp. added at least 2.1 percent to pace gains among financial companies. Chesapeake (CHK) Energy Corp., the second-largest U.S. natural-gas producer, increased 9.5 percent after reporting the highest quarterly profit in the company’s history. Fossil Inc. (FOSL) surged 32 percent after forecasting earnings that exceeded analysts’ estimates on increasing sales of its Skagen brand.

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Recession, Libor, Facebook punish Europe’s banks

(Reuters) – Leading European banks reported dismal profits on Tuesday, blaming everything from the continent’s debt crisis and Spain’s property market crash to Facebook’s disastrous stock market debut.

Within a space of an hour UBS (UBSN.VX) of Switzerland, Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), BBVA (BBVA.MC) of Spain and Austria’s Erste Bank (ERST.VI) delivered the bad news on an industry already beset by investigations into a number of scandals.

Deutsche Bank, Germany’s flagship lender, announced it will axe 1,900 jobs under a plan to cut costs by 3 billion euros ($3.7 billion) and streamline its business. New co-Chief Executive Anshu Jain said expectations on profitability had moved “closer to our grim scenario”.

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