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Friday
09 January 2009
03:00 GMT
Financial News Feeds 
Women in finance survey - PDF 91k
In September, Financial News surveyed 1350 women working in the financial services industry about gender bias in the workplace. Nearly 60% believed their gender made it harder to succeed. Just 3.5% felt being a woman made it easier to succeed. A third of respondents worked in investment banking, nearly a fifth in asset management, another fifth in financial technology, 10% in law and about 5% in each of private equity, hedge funds, wealth management and securities trading. Click here to dowload the survey results in full.
The future of capital markets - PDF 655k
The balance of power in global financial markets is shifting. As the world becomes flatter and different sources of wealth seek new areas of investment, financial institutions will have to position themselves carefully. Financial News examines how the credit crisis has catalysed this flattening effect and the challenges investment banks face.
Feature
Hedge Funds - Investors head for the exit
10 Nov 2008
Hedge Funds - Investors head for the exit
10 Nov 2008
The decline in the hedge fund industry will wipe out tens of billions of dollars in fees they pay to investment banks next year, forcing banks to make further staff cuts and shift their focus to less lucrative customers.
Millionaire hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde might have got it right. The man whose valediction last month to his industry peers announced that “with all due respect, I am dropping out”, left the industry while the going was still relatively good.
Portfolio valuation has become one of the most serious themes in the unstable market environment. One could trace the beginnings of the crisis to the inability of Bear Stearns to value its complex credit portfolios for two of its hedge funds last year.
Hedge fund managers may challenge the right of the Financial Services Authority to prohibit short selling on financial stocks, as the ban continues to disrupt many firms’ ability to do business, according to lawyers.
Most hedge funds support the industry’s best practice standards but remain uncommitted to signing up to them because of fears over additional regulatory burden, lack of pressure from investors and legal repercussions, according to a survey of more than 100 hedge funds.
In the wake of the credit crunch and dramatically changing capital markets landscape, Financial News casts the spotlight on the variables adopted by single-manager hedge funds and how these might change as US and European managers attempt to make their funds more competitive.
Big may not always be better, but for investors in 18 of the world’s largest hedge fund managers whose flagship funds have made money this year, it has proved safer. True, some of the gains by the largest managers have been meagre – Cerberus International and Millennium International Fund made just 0.1% to September 30 – and those losing money far outnumber those making it.
As the credit crunch spreads to all areas of the market, investors are facing increasingly tricky decisions on where to put their money. Hedge funds have been done no favours by the ban on shorting stocks, the perception is that hedge fund investing is becoming too risky, and there is a lack of transparency.
For years it was just another way for pension funds and insurance companies with large piles of liquid, long-term securities in their portfolios to generate extra cash – lend the securities out to hedge funds and others for a negotiated fee, and let the borrowers do what they may. That was before September.
The reshuffling and disappearance of prime brokers in the past three months may have sent shock waves through the industry but for many this year has brought much unexpected business.
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