{"id":9991,"date":"2009-02-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T04:00:00","slug":"bbva-to-exit-hedge-funds-due-to-poor-market-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/02\/2009\/bbva-to-exit-hedge-funds-due-to-poor-market-conditions.html","title":{"rendered":"BBVA to Exit Hedge Funds Due to Poor Market Conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wall Street Journal &#8211; Spain&#8217;s <span class=\"companyRollover link11unvisited\">Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria<\/span> SA said Thursday it has decided to pull out of the hedge-fund market, shutting down Proxima Alfa Investments and exiting two other joint ventures. <\/p>\n<p>Spain&#8217;s second-biggest bank by assets said the pullout was the result of tough market conditions and in anticipation of potential effects from the financial crisis on the hedge-fund industry. The closure affects around 100 employees, and represents less than 1% of the bank&#8217;s &euro;130 billion ($165 billion) in assets under management, said a BBVA executive, whose name the bank declined to release.<\/p>\n<p>The global financial crisis has cooled a once-blossoming romance between banks and hedge funds, with some banks experiencing how being too closely associated with the industry could taint their image. BBVA&#8217;s larger rival Banco Santander SA recently took a hit to its reputation from news that its fund-of-hedge-funds manager Optimal Investment Services had an exposure of &euro;2.3 billion to Bernard Madoff&#8217;s alleged Ponzi scheme. It has since said it would shut down Optimal.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to Proxima, BBVA is winding down Altitude and exiting BBVA Partners, two smaller alternative-investment managers. Most of the 2,000 or so clients that are invested in the 24 funds affected by the closure are institutional investors, the BBVA official said.<\/p>\n<p>With $930 million in assets under management, Proxima Alfa was BBVA&#8217;s biggest bet on hedge funds. The bank invested $1 billion of its own funds when it formed Proxima in 2006 as a $3 billion joint venture with hedge-fund company Vega Asset Management.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB123569956585789461.html?mod=googlenews_wsj\" target=\"_self\">Read Complete Article<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wall Street Journal &#8211; Spain&#8217;s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria SA said Thursday it has decided to pull out of the hedge-fund market, shutting down Proxima Alfa Investments and exiting two other joint ventures. Spain&#8217;s second-biggest bank by assets said the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7078,1007,8311,8313,8315,6598,4331,8312,709,4636,6826,781,5297,6602,6600,8317,8316,7648,8314,2750],"class_list":["post-9991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-syndicated","tag-alternative-investment","tag-assets-under-management","tag-banco-bilbao-vizcaya","tag-banco-bilbao-vizcaya-argentaria","tag-banco-bilbao-vizcaya-argentaria-sa","tag-banco-santander","tag-bernard-madoff","tag-bilbao-vizcaya-argentaria","tag-fund-of-hedge-funds","tag-global-financial-crisis","tag-hedge-fund-company","tag-institutional-investors","tag-investment-managers","tag-investment-services","tag-optimal-investment","tag-pullout","tag-taint","tag-tough-market","tag-vega-asset-management","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9991\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hedgeco.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}