Bloomberg – Artradis Fund Management Pte, RAB Capital Plc’s Northwest unit and Cannizaro (Hong Kong) Ltd. are cutting fees and locking up investors’ money for longer in new hedge funds that will buy bonds after prices fell in Asia.
Merrill Lynch & Co.’s prime brokerage unit has been approached by at least eight money managers about starting such funds in Asia to buy beaten-up fixed-income securities such as convertible bonds, said Eddie Guillemette, the firm’s regional co-head of global markets financing and services. Some of the hedge fund managers are offering to reduce management and performance-based fees by as much as 50 percent, he said.
“You’ve got people who are now setting up vehicles with long lockups to take advantage of distressed or stressed asset classes where the pricing is now at a multidecade level of cheapness,” said Richard Johnston, Hong Kong-based Asia head of hedge fund consulting firm Albourne Partners Ltd. The UBS Convertible Asia ex-Japan Index is down 37 percent in dollar terms this year.
