NEW hedge fund raises $ 96 M

New York hedge fund firm Fir Tree partners has launched a new hedge fund.

The Fund, which is offered by Fir Tree affiliate Camellia Advisor, up 96 million dollar begins 1 dec, according with the Securities and Exchange Commission filing made public on Wednesday.

Also in archiving, will fund open to investors in less than a year. The money was raised from 10 investors who put in a minimum investment of $1,513,.

FIR Tree Partners was founded in 1994 by the Wall Street veteran Jeffrey Tannenbaum. The company has approximately $ 7 billion of assets under management and acting in various strategies including real estate.

NJ But Charged With Hedge Fund Fraud

Two New Jersey men were arrested Wednesday on charges of fraud victims of more than 3.5 million dollars in false hedge fund scam.

New Jersey U.S. Attorney Paul j. Fishman announced that George Sepero, 39, Glen Rock, N.J., and Anthony Provenzano, 29, in Garfield, NJ, were charged with wire fraud conspiracy.

Prosecutors in a complaint Sepero and Provenzano claimed to have operated several hedge funds with a secret computer programs to invest in foreign currencies and achieve returns more than 170 percent in the previous two years.

Prosecutors also argued that the two men spend money invested with them at advanced vehicles, luxury travel and five-figure bar tabs.

Fishman offered a mild rebuke to the victims of the alleged scheme that they should have been more vigilant when they invested with Sepero and Provenzano.

"Nobody asks to be merchants, but they look to invest should always be skeptical of the rate of return that extends so far beyond the norm," Fishman said.

The couple made his first appearance in Federal Court in Newark, NJ Wednesday afternoon. U.s. Magistrate Judge Michael Shipp was released both defendants on $ 250,000 bond each, and ordered that their travel is restricted and passports surrendered. If convicted, face Sepero and Provenzano 20 years in prison and a fine of $ 250,000.

Complaints against George Sepero and Carmelo Provenzano

NY Hedge Fund Charged With Securities Fraud

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Securities and Exchange Commission har laddat New-York-baserade Hedgefond ThinkStrategy Capital Management och dess enda verkst?llande direkt?r med v?rdepapper bedr?geri.

Chetan Kapur har anklagats f?r ?verdriver fondens resultat och ge falska f?retagsinformation till investerare i ?ver sju ?r, enligt instruktionen SEK p? torsdag.

Klagom?let h?vdade ocks? att f?retaget investerat i hedgefonder som var inblandade i Ponzi system eller andra allvarliga bedr?gerier, trots informera investerare att dessa medel valdes efter en rigor?s vederb?rlig aktsamhet process.

Vid sin h?jdpunkt 2008 lyckades ThinkStrategy cirka 520 miljoner dollar i tillg?ngar.

SEK klagom?l mot ThinkStrategy kapital

Citigroup Introduces ' Hedge Fund 3.0 '

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Citigroup wants to help hedge funds operate more efficiently and has a model to make that a reality.

The financial services firm's prime brokerage unit introduced on Wednesday the "Hedge Fund 3.0" concept, based on its study of hedge funds in the past two years.

Hedge Fund 3.0 is designed as a guideline for building a successful hedge fund by focusing more on the core of their business — promoting to potential customers and growing the assets under management.

The way that will happen successfully during the Hedge Fund 3.0 model is by hedge funds shedding a number of in-house operations and outsourcing them.

The model identifies what measures would be beneficial for hedge funds to attain efficiency along with savings: business process outsourcing for various day-to-day functions, specialist HR and benefits brokers, off-premise IT services and knowledge process outsourcing.

(A) previous Citigroup survey found that firms spare no expense when it comes to computer operations as it projected that hedge funds will spend over $ 2 billion on information technology in 2011.

Sandy Kaul, U.S. head of business advisory at Citi, said hedge funds in today's markets should consider Hedge Fund 3.0.

"These firms can think strategically about the use of outsourced partners, especially when facing trigger events, such as, expansion to larger office space, replacing end-of-life equipment, moving to multi-currency operations, or launching a new investment strategy," Kaul said. "Over time, many funds will move to a hybrid approach that combines in-house and outsourced resources."

Citigroup's New Hedge Fund 3.0

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New Rules Bring About Hedge Fund Transparency

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The Securities and Exchange Commission approved Wednesday the adoption of a new rules requiring private funds to report details of about how they borrow and invest.

Specifically due to the Dodd-Frank Act, registered investment advisers with at least $150 million in private fund assets under management must periodically file reports on what is known as Form PF with regulators starting next year, according to various reports.

Also the advisers are broken up into two categories – “large” and “small” - with large being $1.5 billion and above, while smaller funds are below $1.5 billion.

The new rules are considered historic since private funds including hedge funds, private-equity funds and other types of pooled investment vehicles in the past did not have to register with the SEC.

However, the hedge fund industry fought for and won some concessions.

Those hedge funds that meet the $1.5 billion in assets threshold would have to provide the most in-depth reporting of information, instead of the $1 billion mark originally proposed.

Some other concessions include filings to be done 60 days after the end of a fiscal quarter, instead of the originally proposed 15 days after a quarter’s end and hedge funds will not have to report on individual holdings in their portfolio but instead aggregate holdings.

But the rule does not go into effect immediately as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has to approve the rule, which may happen sometime next week.

Those involved in the investment world weighed in on the adoption of the Form PF regulation.

Kevin Duffy, a former SEC staff attorney who oversees the regulatory and compliance practice at financial advisory firm Kinetic Partners saw the pros and cons of the new rule in an interview with Hedgefund.net.

Duffy said the change for filings from 15 days to 60 days was “pretty reasonable.” Yet, he thought Form PF should not be about one form fits all funds but instead should be different forms for different funds.

He also said he wouldn’t be surprised if some money managers would seek legal action to overturn the new rules, pointing out that a lawsuit brought by a hedge fund was successful in stopping the SEC from imposing rules to get hedge funds to register.

At the same time, Duffy offered a caveat.

“If someone is going to bring legal action, they have to look and see if it is financially worth it,” Duffy said.

Go to New York Times article

Go to Wall Street Journal

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Boston Pension Allocates $60M to Hedge Fund

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Boston’s municipal pension system has allocated $60 million to a New York hedge fund firm.

The $4.7 billion State-Boston Retirement System has chosen EnTrust Capital, according to HFMWeek.

EnTrust takes over from Arden Asset Management, which the pension terminated business with in March.

EnTrust Capital has gained name recognition in recent years for having an investor in New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, until he ended his relationship with the long/short firm in 2009.

The firm has $550 million in assets under management.

Go to HFMWeek article

Jonkoping tränares hedge fund Launch delayed

Hedge Fund launch of Highbridge capital, former head of the Asia investment has been delayed by a Hong Kong s.a.r. supervisory authority.

Hong Kong's securities and Futures Commission is investigating allegations that Carl Huttenlocher and others who worked with him at Jonkoping, incorrectly valued illiquid assets during the 2008 financial crisis, and afterwards, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

Huttenlochers new Hong Kong s.a.r.-based hedge fund company, Myriad asset management, was scheduled to start trading on Sept. 1 with 300 million dollars in assets.

Huttenlocher managed a $ 1.4 billion Asian Fund for Ramsey, owned by JP Morgan Chase, until he left the company in March last year.

Go to the Wall Street Journal article

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Hedge Fund Advisor gets five years

The Securities and Exchange Commission has placed a five-year ban on a New York hedge fund adviser from carrying out any future activities.

Robert Feinblatt, founder of the now defunct Trivium Capital Management, can restore to the SEC after five years, according to a regulatory ruling last week.

Feinblatt and Trivium analyst Jeffrey Yokuty (which had three year ban) were charged in January in Manhattan Federal Court trading on inside information.

Two were connected to the Government informant capacious Khan, a longtime associate of convicted hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.

The SEC charged that Feinblatt and Yokuty received inside information from Khan for trade in the shares of Polycom, hotel chain Hilton, Google and Kronos, the business software company.

Federal prosecutors claimed Khan had received information from Sunil Bhalla, a leading executive business videoconferencing Company Polycom, Shammara Hussain, an employee at investor relations consulting firm market Street partners.

The ban is part of the final judgment against Feinblatt, covering him pay off the SEC over 2.6 million dollars in fines.

Yokuty and Hussain of also have been ordered to pay fines, while Bhalla struggling SECS legal action against him.

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SEC freezes assets of Hedge Fund

The Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of Chicago-area money manager and his quant hedge funds.

The SEC on Wednesday charged Belal Faruki and his fixed neural markets with lying to potential investors in his company's start-up hedge funds.

The SEC said, from January 2010 through October 2010 Faruki distorted allegedly on hedge fund performance track record, misstated that 5 million dollars has already been invested in the Fund for wealthy investors, and incorrectly that he had invested his own money into hedge-fund.

The SEC also charged that the Farukis system will cost one of the Fund's investors of $ 1 million.

Hedge fund managers each receive $ 111 M fine

Cayman Islands Grand Court fines two hedge funds managers 111 million dollars each for their role in the collapse of their companies.

Stefan Peterson and his Ekstr?m by the now defunct London-based hedge fund Weavering Capital, which also had a Cayman Islands office, was found guilty by the Court of "wilful neglect or default in performance of their duties", reported the HFM week.

Losses incurred by the company are superseded by the company, however, the Court had substantial evidence that the couple avoided their professional duties.

Before the company closed 2009 for only 90 million dollars of 223 million dollars in the request for redemption, had Weavering 639 million USD in assets under management by HFM week.

Go to HFM week article

Mass pension moveable $ 1B in hedge funds

The Massachusetts Pension reserves investment is $ 1 billion in hedge funds and another billion for local currency emerging markets debt.

50.3 Billion dollar pension is also cut three billion dollars from shares as part of the new allocation plan as an asset, a pensions and investments, the report.

The changes were approved Tuesday and will cut Prim ' S global equity allocation to 43 percent from 49 percent, with the reduction, which focused on International shares and domestic large-cap shares.

Steve Grossman, Massachusetts state Treasurer and PRIM President, said transferring the asset mix of the current assignment may take up to nine months, pensions and investment reported.

Go to pensions and investment article

Hedge Fund Manager accused of embezzlement

Pennsylvania hedge fund manager was indicted by a grand jury for allegedly lying to investors and transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars to his personal account.

Federal prosecutors in Alabama last week accused Anthony Klatch and his partner, Timothy Sullivan misleading investors in his company, activity Capital Partners, which solicited more than 2.3 million USD from eight investors, half of them Alabama residents, reported JOB options.

Prosecutors asked to Klatch and Sullivan only invested 60% of the money they raised for the task at the end of 2009, and lost it all through bad investments. The other 40% was used to pay off "angry investors" or went against the Klatchs personal account.

Go to job options article here

Hedge Fund Manager agrees to Permanently ban

Former hedge fund manager Francisco Illarramendi might see another line of work when he agreed to a permanent ban from working in the security industry.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the agreement on Wednesday.

The ban stems from Illarramendis guilty plea in March to four counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy.

The SEC alleged that Illarramendi misappropriated $ 53 million in investor assets managed by his Connecticut hedge fund firm Michael Kenwood Capital Management (MK capital), including funds from retirement as Venezuelan State oil company PDVSA.

He was also the task of the unauthorized private equity-type investments with the embezzled money as sinking 23 million dollars to the NuScale power, a startup company nuclear power in Oregon, United States.

The US Government also seized as part of his case, 230 million dollars kept in an offshore account of his hedge fund, which is kept in an unnamed U.S. bank until the completion of his case.

Illarramendi, 42, faces 70 years in prison at his sentencing.

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Pension plan allocates $ 200 M to hedge funds

San Diego County employees retirement Association (SDCERA) is planning to allocate $ 200 million to hedge funds.

Pension plan will devote 100 million dollars to long/short credit hedge fund Saba Capital Management, while the remaining $ 100 million is dedicated to the Shaw as part of its global macro/CTA portfolio, by HFMWeek.

SDCERA currently allocates approximately 1.7 billion dollars to 17 global macro and relative value hedge funds.

Go to HFMWeek article

Hedge Fund Bigwigs to Christie?

New Jersey Governor and 2012 presidential tease can Chris Christie gets some support from the hedge fund industry if he actually decides to run.

A meeting of potential donors established by Kenneth Langone, co-founder of Home Depot, took place at a Manhattan on Tuesday, a Politico.com-report.

Participants with billionaire hedge fund managers Stanley Druckenmiller, founder of the now closed Duquesne capital and Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor investments.

Politico reported that participants in the room complained that they voted for President Barack Obama but was now "greatly disappointed" with what they saw as him carrying on "class warfare."

Hedge fund managers have shrink from supports Obama's 2012 presidential run in opposition to his call for the regulation of the hedge fund industry. Obama has tried to bring them back into the fold while his choice requires an elimination of the tax break for hedge funds and private equity managers as part of the debt ceiling talks.

But Christie when entertaining offers to become a candidate, whether from Iowa businessmen or hedge fund bigwigs, keeps repeating the mantra that he did not run for any higher office. He did so again at Manhattan meeting when he said, "I do not run, but I came because Langone is so aggressive, he basically just physically shook me up."

Christie also is said to have told them at the meeting that he believed he could win if he ran but was forced to take into account the implications of serving in the White House on his family.

Jones and Druckenmiller is not the only two hedge funds bigwigs who would like to see a Christie Presidency. David Tepper Appaloosa management and Pennant Capital Management co-founder Alan Fournier has expressed his support of Christie's education policy in New Jersey as more Charter schools.

A representative of Gov. Christie would not be reached immediately for comment by HedgeFund.net on the report. A representative of Jones did not return a call before the deadline for this article. Druckenmiller could not be reached for comment.

Go to the Newsweek article

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Ex-Blue Ridge Exec Launches $ 1B Hedge Fund

A former Blue Ridge capital Executive is set to launch a new hedge fund.

Richard Gerson, who worked for 15 years during John Griffin on Blue Ridge, are attracting investors is a fund that is estimated to open with $ 1 billion, according to HFAlert report.

The Fund's new Office is set to open in New York and begins to trade global shares vehicles as early as next year.

Gerson has also brought on board as Martin Byman chief operating officer for the new Fund. Byman was formerly group leader of Europe's leading brokerage at Morgan Stanley.

Go to the HFAlert.com article

AIMA says hedge funds is ' safe to fail "

A London-based financial organisation said Thursday that hedge funds should not be subject to rules currently being discussed in the United States.

Alternative Investment Management Association, which has 1,250 companies members even in the hedge fund industry, argued that hedge funds are not a "risk for financial stability" throughout the world.

The newly created United States-based financial stability Oversight Council views as non-bank financial firms should be regarded as "systemically important" and hence be subject to additional regulation of the Federal Reserve.

One of AIMAS argument is that hedge funds industry, with about 10,000 hedge funds manage a combined $ 2 trillion in assets, is still small compared with other financial sectors like investment banking.

AIMA also pointed out that more than 1,400 individual hedge funds in 2008, at the height of the financial crisis has closed or were dismantled without prejudice "the stability of the financial system at large."

AIMA President Todd Groome said, "2008 experience shows that hedge funds are ' safe to fail", even if they are not fail-safe. Furthermore, hedge fund activities not usually pro-cyclical market dynamics, they tend to be Luther or to seek market inefficiencies and through their investment activities tend to increase the effectiveness of the markets. "

Groome was recognised by hedge fund managers, register with the SEC as a means of the regulation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted new rules in June, introduced under bill economic reform Dodd-Frank requires hedge fund companies as well as private investment advisors with assets under management of more than $ 150 million must register with the SEC. Rules take effect in March.

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Hedge Fund awarded $ 64 M in Merrill case

A hedge fund in Santa Monica, California was the big winner in an arbitration case against Bank of America Merrill Lynch when it was awarded an approximately 64 million dollars by a supervisory authority for this week.

The financial industry regulatory authority ordered BofA Merrill pay Rosen capital advisors 68.9 million dollars on Tuesday, according to a FINRA documents.

Rosen was out for 90 million dollars when it filed an arbitration claim against Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. in 2009 argues that Merrill had carried out "an unexpectedly wide margin requirements which caused losses in two hedge funds", both operated by Rosen.

Hedge Fund firm had accused Merrill of fraud, negligence, breach of contract, and acting in bad faith ", as in the previous arbitration ruling.

BofA Merrill, plan, according to news reports, to overturn the award settlement.

South Carolina Retirement Ups Hedge Fund investments

South Carolina's most important public pension plan, investment Commission 26 billion dollar South Carolina Retirement System has recently increased the appropriations for the two hedge funds giants.

The pension has doubled the allocation for Avenue Capital Management to 500 million dollars, and combined two existing commitments to the D.E. Shaw Group which amounted to 450 million dollars and added another $ 300 million, according to a report in pensions and investments.

Avenue capital, run by Marc Lasry, 13.7 billion dollars in assets under management.

D.E. Shaw, founded by David Shaw, has over 14 billion dollars of AUM.

Go to pensions and investments

Hedge funds focus on New Jersey teachers

New Jersey-based hedge fund managers David Tepper and Alan Fournier has created a new non-profit organization that wading into the emotionally charged arena of the State's public education system.

Better education for children was launched (B4K), based in New Brunswick, earlier this month by Tepper, founder of 16 billion dollars the Appaloosa management and Fournier leading Pennant Capital Management, which has about 3 billion dollars in assets under management.

The objectives of B4K, however, has put it at odds with the New Jersey Education Association, the State's major teachers Union, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal.

B4K advocates for tying tenure to teacher evaluation and elimination of seniority in teacher-hiring decisions in the New Jersey public schools, among other things.

An estimated 112,000 teacher teaches over 1.3 million students in 2,480 public schools, NJ Department of education data.

B4K has already launched an ad campaign, the journal reported, in order to fight back against NJEA ads criticizing Governor Chris Christie for his attacks on the teacher's Union, as well as cuts in education in the State budget.

Tepper and Fournier has links with Christie due to both its hedge fund company in the wealthy enclave of Chatham, where Christie owns a home. Tepper is also a major aid donor to the community FoodBank of New Jersey, which is also supported by Christie's wife, Mary Pat.

Go to the Wall Street Journal article

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