http://www.hedgefundsreview.com Hedge Funds Review News Update en-us © Copyright Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 1996-2007. webmaster@incisivemedia.com Hedge Funds Review http://www.incisivemedia.com/hfr/images/logo.gif http://www.hedgefundsreview.com Institutional investment managers showed the most optimistic economic expectations from investment managers since the quarterly poll was begun a year ago by Northern Trust Global Advisors (NTGA). Managers are still hesitant to call a buoyant V-shaped recovery, said the report, with potential fragility in the system. Just over three-quarters (76%) of respondents said they expect interest rates to hold steady, reflecting a view that central banks will be hesitant to raise interest rates for fear of choking off early signs of recovery. Under half (46%) still believe the Standard & Poor's 500 Index is undervalued. The group of managers who believe the ... Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:55:00 +0100 Convenção was founded in 1973. The senior management of Convenção will remain with the company after the acquisition is completed. For the year to December 2008, Convenção reported revenues of R$21.9 million (£8 million). The initial consideration for the acquisition is R$20 million (£7.3 million) payable in cash with deferred consideration up to a maximum of R$30.3 million (£11 million) payable in cash subject to achievement of future revenue and profit targets. The acquisition of Convenção marks Tullett Prebon's entry to the on-shore Latin American market. The company intends to establish a presence in key countries throughout the region. Convenção is being sold ... Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:53:00 +0100 Independent mid-market institutional derivatives and securities dealer Conduit Capital Markets has appointed Rakesh Chhabra as chief financial officer. Previously he was finance manager at Knight Equity Markets International overseeing corporate accounting. Broker dealer Uhlmann Price Securities has appointed Alan Delcorse as a director of the institutional services group. He has an extensive background in non-traditional investments including convertible securities, managed futures and hedge funds. Previously Delcorse was an executive vice president of Man Investments working with advisors and their clients primarily in the western US. BofA Merrill Lynch Global Research has appointed Doug Leggate as senior large-cap US oils and refining analyst ... Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:51:00 +0100 EuroCCP has also extended its relationship with Citi's global transaction services by appointing the company as EuroCCP's settlement agent for these instruments. Initially all transactions will settle at Euroclear Bank. Some ISINs are eligible both at Euroclear Bank and the Depository Trust Company (DTC). For these, after the initial period, the settlement location will be at either Euroclear Bank or DTC. This should limit the need for cross-border realignments and help to reduce overall processing costs. Depositary receipts transactions cleared and settled through EuroCCP will be priced with fees starting at €0.03 a side and falling €0.002 a side. For those transactions ... Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:50:00 +0100 IIF will use the thought leadership platforms of P&I and AIF have built with public and corporate pension plans, endowments, foundations, insurance companies, large family offices and sovereign wealth funds. IIF will have an advisory board chaired by a Harvard Business School professor and will include representatives such as leading academicians and economists, investment board members, senior investment staff and investment consultants. The venture will be launched s on December 1, 2009 in New York City. IIF's first event will be held in New York City on January 12-14, 2010. The event will feature roundtable discussions among investment board members, staff, managers and ... Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:57:00 +0100 The first affiliation will be with the Mid Atlantic Hedge Fund Association (MAHFA) with other regional alliances to follow. MFA will hold a special meeting for new and potential affiliates at its inaugural hedge fund leadership conference on October 15-16. Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:56:00 +0100 Both the fund vehicles and management company are domiciled in the European Union, making it a complete onshore hedge fund structure but not constrained by Ucits III. The structure has gained the approval of three regulators - teak Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulating the sub-adviser, the Maltese Financial Services Authority (MFSA) which regulates the investment fund and manager and the Danish regulator (Finanstilsynet). The founding team behind the company consists of Nicolai Borcher Hansen, Peter Brink Madsen, Christian Falster and Jacob Madsen. Three of the founders recently broke away from Denmark's largest privately owned asset manager, Formuepleje. Formuepleje Safe, a fund that ... Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:30:00 +0100 The company was established earlier this year by former Shuaa Capital manager Haissam Arabi, who will manage the Gulfmena Arab Opportunities Fund. The macro-directional absolute return fund will focus on MENA equity markets. The strategy is designed to take advantage of current short-term market inefficiencies, while being able to capitalise on long-term directional opportunities. The fund will be registered as a mutual fund with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority. Gulfmena Alternative Investments is licensed by the Dubai Financial Services Authority and is headquartered in the Dubai International Financial Centre. The fund will have two share classes. Class A shares will have a minimum ... Mon, 12 Oct 2009 23:19:00 +0100 Each of the strategies is fully customisable and can be adapted by the user to fit their needs and differentiate their trading strategies in the market. The algorithms have been integrated within StreamBase's trading system framework. "This integration allows firms to focus on developing unique strategies, back testing and iterating the business logic in their algorithms rather than spend time on the underlying trading infrastructure which is already integrated with basic strategies, with pre-built connectivity and pre-optimised for performance," said Richard Tibbetts, chief technology officer at StreamBase. The eight order execution strategies offered by StreamBase are volume weighted average price, time weighted ... Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:23:00 +0100 Long/short equity and emerging markets managers had another positive month driven by equity market gains in September. At the end of the best quarter since 1998 for the Dow Jones Index, up nearly 15%, market sentiment was further boosted by several positive macro indicators. These included an increase in the Global Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) signalling expanding manufacturing output and a continuing stabilisation of global economic activity. Inflation continued its downward trend in the US and in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Central banks overall maintained low interest rates. Many equity indexes finished in positive territory, although there were ... Fri, 9 Oct 2009 21:32:00 +0100 For decades institutional investors had been shifting allocation preferences from fixed-income securities into equity, according to Matteo Tonello, associate director of corporate governance at The Conference Board and co-author of the yearly Conference Board Institutional Investment Report, Trends in Asset Allocation and Portfolio Composition. The report gives an analysis of the asset growth and portfolio composition of institutional investors in the US. It documents the presence of different types of institutional investors in single asset classes, such as equity, debt securities, alternative instruments including hedge funds and foreign securities. By the end of 2008 institutions had only 36.6% of their assets in ... Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:41:00 +0100 It is a multi-asset fund with actively managed exposure in global equity securities, global bonds, commodity markets, money market instruments, currencies, global real estate markets and hedge funds, providing diversification benefits by using low-correlated allocations. The fund is domiciled in Dublin and has been approved by the Irish Regulator. It offers daily liquidity and is available in US dollar, sterling and euro share classes. Castlestone Management has a track record in multi-asset investments through its Porcupine Global Macro Plus which returned a positive 14.43% in 2008. Castlestone Management previously launched Ucits III versions of two previously offshore-only commodity funds, the Aliquot Agriculture Fund ... Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:37:00 +0100 Over half (52%) of financial services professionals said their companies have revised bonus policies. There is a broad consensus attitudes toward risk have not changed. Among financial professionals who take risk, 60 percent said that current bonus policies have no impact on risk taking. Meanwhile, 28 percent indicated constraint and 12 percent are emboldened by their firm's bonus policy to take additional risk. Finance professionals working at bulge-bracket or commercial banks were more likely to have a new pay structure, while alternative asset management and boutique bank employees were the least likely. A majority (57%) of financial services professionals expect their year-end bonuses ... Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:36:00 +0100 Nasdaq OMX has introduced mandatory CCP on nine Nordic securities - three each Finnish, Swedish and Danish stocks. The introduction of CCP in the Nordic equity markets is part of Nasdaq OMX's strategy to increase market liquidity through an open, competitive CCP model. Nasdaq OMX Nordic and its three CCP partners (EMCF, SIX X-clear and Euro CCP) have further agreed to achieve competitive clearing by January 2010. "This is the biggest structural change for the Nordic equity markets since trading became electronic in the early 1990s," said Hans-Ole Jochumsen, president of NASDAQ OMX Nordic. He expects the introduction of CCP to ... Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:35:00 +0100 The component weightings of the Dow Jones STOXX Global Select Dividend 100 Index follows a methodology based on dividend yield rather than the traditional market capitalisation weighting. This allows market participants to access the performance of high-dividend paying global companies. The indexes provide exposure to single countries and specific regions. Launched at the end of February 2007, the index comprises the 100 highest dividend-yielding stocks worldwide. It consists of 40 stocks from the Americas and 30 stocks each from Europe and Asia/Pacific. As of October 8, 2009, the index was up 28.59% for the year. To be eligible for inclusion in index, ... Fri, 9 Oct 2009 14:34:00 +0100