Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
Got those Great Recession blues
Given the amount of money central banks have been pumping into the global economy you’d be forgiven for thinking we should be getting a pretty decent recovery right now. And whilst that seems true for emerging markets, market participants and consumers just can’t rid themselves of the feeling that there is another shoe yet to drop.
Citi’s Matt King encapsulated this general nervousness in his presentation at the CFA Institute’s European Investment Conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday. And according to King, there are some very good reasons why corporates and households just can’t bring themselves to load up on more debt.
“We’ve had the worst recession since the 1930s, but it doesn’t feel like it, because we haven’t taken all the pain yet,” he said. “We’ve simply shuffled the debt around – that’s why markets are still so volatile and correlations are so elevated.”
King argued that if this is a normal cycle, corporates will soon come under pressure from shareholders to start borrowing again in order to invest and expand. “The risk is this is not a normal cycle, but something different,” he said.
Morning Line-Up
News and views on the hedge fund sector from Reuters and elsewhere:
David Tepper is the happiest man in hedge funds- Absolute Return-Alpha
Fund managers may return 20 percent of bonuses under EU law – Bloomberg
Brevan Howard leads the listed hedge market to the cusp of change - Investment Week
Volcker rule speeds up Citigroup sale of hedge fund and PE units - Telegraph
Spain sides with Britain to soften EU rules on hedge funds - Guardian
Who dares wins
Everyone is interested in reading about someone making billions of dollars in profit, and the Wall Street Journal’s story about the Appaloosa fund making $7 bln of profit so far this year is certainly eye-catching.
Rather like London’s Crispin Odey, who earned a handy 30 mln stg this year, the fund, run by David Tepper, made its money buying bargain basement bank shares.
from DealZone:
R.I.P. Salomon Brothers
It's official: Salomon Brothers has been completely picked apart.
Citigroup's agreement to sell Phibro, its profitable but controversial commodity trading business, to Occidental Petroleum today puts the finishing touches on a slow erosion of a once-dominant bond trading and investment banking firm.
When Sandy Weill (pictured left) staged his 1998 coup -- combining Citicorp and Travelers, Salomon Brothers was a strong albeit humbled investment banking and trading force. Yet little by little, a succession of financial crises, Wall Street fashion and regulatory intervention has whittled away at the once-dominant firm.
