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Sweden mulls EU summit ahead of G20 meeting

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The Swedish Wire – Sweden, which holds the rotating EU presidency, is consulting European capitals and “most of them are positive” about the idea, said Roberta Alenius, spokeswoman for Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

“The prime minister wants a summit if it is really needed, and if it gives a common position before the Pittsburgh meeting” on September 24-25, she added.

EU member states have already agreed among themselves to boost surveillance of the banking and insurance sectors as well as hedge funds.

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SEC needs hedge fund authority-Schapiro

Guardian Unlimited – The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission needs authority to require hedge fund advisers to register with the agency plus the power to examine funds’ books, the agency’s chairman said on Tuesday.

U.S. lawmakers are working to give the SEC the power to require hedge fund managers to register with the agency after a federal court overturned the SEC’s previous effort to oversee the $1.3 trillion industry.

Speaking at the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit in Washington, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro said registration without any further authority "would not be sufficient."

 
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Putting Finance Capitalism “Back in Its Box”

OpEdNews – So writes Philip Augar in an April 13 Financial Times (FT) op-ed. He’s a former UK investment banker/broker and author of The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism, The Greed Merchants, and most recently Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City’s Golden Decade. More on his newest book below.

He quotes Nicolas Sarkozy, a questionable choice, at the G 20 summit saying "The all-powerful market that is always right is finished," then on departure adding "a page has been turned." For Augar, that depends on whether a "free-market" successor is constructed, something "entrenched interests in America and Britain would be well-advised to encourage if they wish to remain centre stage."

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IOSCO to outline new role of regulators at conference

Jerusalem Post – While the recent G-20 summit in London provided world financial leaders with the opportunity to begin charting a path of recovery for the ailing global economy, the work to build the markets up and to ensure that a crisis like this never happens again will be left to the world’s securities regulators. Regulators around the world, due to their supposed lapse of supervision on the international securities industry, have come under fire for their role in allowing the crisis to occur.

Here in Israel, the country’s chief securities watchdog, Prof. Zohar Goshen, chairman of the Israel Securities Authority, has also been a center of attention with the publication of his "Goshen Plan," an ambitious agenda that seeks to restructure the local corporate bonds market by giving institutions a government guarantee covering 75-80 percent of new corporate bonds issued. This means the institutions will bear 20% of any loss, with the government bearing the rest.

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G-20 Nations OK $1.1 Tril. in Emergency Loans

The Ledger – Anxiously assembled at the most perilous moment for the global economy since the Great Depression, the world’s financial powers pledged more than $1 trillion Thursday for emergency loans to combat spreading chaos. But they rebuffed President Barack Obama’s bid for new stimulus spending and made no guarantees of success.

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"This was the day the world came together to fight back against global recession," declared British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the summit host, as he led a choreographed show of unity designed to boost confidence in homes and boardrooms everywhere. "This is just the beginning," added Obama.

No one promised an immediate impact, and all agreed much remained to be done.

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Hedge fund industry still feeling Madoff effect

Reuters – Bernard Madoff is behind bars, but the effects of his fraud are still reverberating in the hedge fund industry, with more redemptions expected and investor confidence decimated.

Traumatized investors are now more likely to closely monitor where their money is and who is managing it, hedge fund professionals said at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit this week.

"You know, it is just absolutely devastating," said Anthony Scaramucci, managing partner at SkyBridge Capital, referring to the Madoff scandal.

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Hedge funds that stay liquid, stay alive

Reuters – The heat is on hedge funds to outperform markets and prove their worth to skeptical investors, and to do so requires strategies based on riding out spikes in volatility, seeking liquidity and deft trading.

Returns this year will, of course, not be what they were in the over-leveraged days before the financial crisis, but convictions on one’s investment strategies and asset allocation will help the best and brightest funds survive, industry experts told the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit.

The strategies expected to do well include commodity trading advisors’ managed futures accounts because they can perform well in times of heightened volatility. Funds that focus on macroeconomic developments were also seen outperforming other strategies given the tremendous changes in policy affecting markets globally and risks of both deflation and inflation.

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Big hedge funds’ golden era fading

Reuters – The golden age for super-sized hedge funds may be coming to an end as investors think about putting more money with smaller players, said an industry veteran who is setting up his own fund.

"I think the established hedge funds will get smaller over time because of redemptions, losses, and loss of talent," Thomas Grossman, principal at Union Avenue Advisors told the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit in New York.

Armed with $100 million (68.6 million pounds) in assets, Grossman plans to make bets in emerging markets and raise as much as $300 million for his new fund. Previously he ran Aeneas Capital Management.

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Quotes from Private Equity, Hedge Funds

Reuters – Following are key quotes from the Reuters Hedge Funds and Private Equity Summit. Below are some quotes from the summit’s second day speakers.

"Nothing much is actually happening. It will be tested over the course of the next 6 months. (The public market shareholders) do seem to be tacitly or directly encouraging companies to push hard with their banks, so rather than selling off the family silver, wait and see if you can get a better deal by deferring things."

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UBS sees hedge fund assets shrinking

Reuters – Hedge fund assets will continue to shrink this year, falling as much as two-thirds from their 2007 peak, but investors will return and assets will rebound when the economy revives, Alex Ehrlich, global head of prime services at Swiss bank UBS, said on Monday.

Last year was the hedge fund industry’s worst ever, as asset values plunged and investors pulled out record amounts of cash. These trends, which forced hundreds of funds to close their doors and some to impose redemption curbs, are likely to continue this year before the industry rebounds, Ehrlich said at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit in New York.

"All this proves is that the hedge fund industry is cyclical," he said. "But the idea of the death of the hedge fund industry is crazy. The industry will rebound, though it will not rebound to peak levels."

Ehrlich, who runs one of the world’s largest prime brokerages, said that in just the past year hedge fund assets have fallen from roughly $2 trillion to as low as $1 trillion.

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Jobless bankers may lift Asian hedge fund numbers

Reuters – The number of Asian hedge funds could increase by 10 percent this year as more unemployed bankers and traders launch new funds and the cost of doing business slumps, an industry expert said on Monday.

"It’s much better to be a small hedge fund manager than an unemployed investment banker," Peter Douglas, founder of hedge fund consultancy GFIA told the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit in Singapore.

"We are beginning to see quite a strong wave of managers’ formation, which is entirely consistent with what we saw after the Asian crisis."

He said these bankers could add to around 700 hedge funds already based in Asia, as battered global banks shed staff who have strong relationships with potential investors, cash from bonuses, and friends to start off small funds.

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Coller to launch new private equity fund

Reuters UK – London-based Coller Capital, which specialises in buying private equity from investors making early exits, said on Monday it expects to launch a new fund this year to tap growing interest in the "secondary" market for private equity.

The firm’s $4.8 billion (3.3 billion pounds) Coller International Partners V fund, which closed in April 2007, is currently more than 50 percent invested, Alex Sao-Wei Lee, the firm’s Singapore-based principal, said at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit.

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