Funds Hub

A question of trust?

Signs of big-ticket investments from pension funds — New York State Common Retirement Fund has backed emerging market debt manager Finisterre Capital with $250 mln.

Despite 2008′s losses, pension funds are obviously keen to invest, perhaps because equity mutual funds lost them even more money than hedge funds during the crisis.

Just as interesting, however, is one of the possible reasons why the $126 bln NYSCRF chose Finisterre (whose assets fell as low as $420 mln in the crisis).

Performance aside, Finisterre claims one of the reasons it’s been able to attract money is because it didn’t put up gates, barring investor exits, during the crisis.

It’s still early, but maybe we’ll begin to see investors starting to shun those funds seen as having locked up their money just when they needed it most.

(Picture: Luke MacGregor. Investors are assessing how hedge funds behaved during storm of the credit crisis)

A loud and clear call

It may not have been a massive surprise, but ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet had an unwelcome message for hedge fund managers today.

The current crisis is, apparently, “a loud and clear call” to roll out regulation to all important market players, “notably hedge funds and credit rating agencies”.

For those hedge fund managers who felt, perhaps with a degree of justification, that their industry had been relatively blameless in precipitating the current crisis, that call may have been somewhat quieter and more muffled.

But the drumbeat of those calling for greater hedge fund regulation is growing and it seems increasingly likely that hedge funds will face a new raft of rules in the not too distant future.

Hedge funds have attempted to justify the slow take up of volunatry codes aimed at staving off heavy-handed regulation, but day-by-day the industry looks like it may have missed the chance of a quiet life… well, relatively speaking.