DealZone

More than a year after one of the hedge fund industry's best known managers departed Goldman Sachs, Mark Carhart re-emerged at a hedge fund conference and told Reuters the big news: he is coming back. You heard it here first.

Mark and his longtime partner, Raymond Iwanowski, retired last March and with research head Giorgio De Santis. More than 12 years of strong performance from Goldman's quant team had made Global Alpha the bank's flagship fund and one of the industry's largest at its early 2007 peak of $12 billion.

 But a year before Wall Street imploded, computer driven funds had their own debacle. Global Alpha plunged in August 2007 as stock prices gyrated and interest rates jolted, prompting investors to pull out billions. That after the fund had lagged the average fund in 2006. And so Carhart "retired" at the age of 43.

Back in April this year, market wags speculated Carhart would land at buyout firm KKR to help build an asset management business. Instead, Carhart tells Reuters he intends to start his own firm and launch an "exotic beta" fund with an initial pool of $1 billion. Of course, fund-raising is tough these days, but Carhart, who is sporting longer hair and a easier smile, says he has been spending some rare time off touring the U.S.A. in his Airstream motor home with his family. If he can manage to keep two kids happy while logging thousands of miles, raising ten figures should be doable. 

Could the sale of Britain’s biggest electricity distribution network help re-energise infrastructure dealmaking?

The supposedly steady business of buying and running roads, ports, and power grids has had a torrid time. The credit crunch has undermined some big infrastructure players, made it tricky to finance deals, and revealed that demand for some services — like toll roads and airports — is flakier than expected. Asset sales have run aground, instead of commanding the big premiums they would have fetched in the frantic debt-fuelled auctions of yore.

Nonetheless, optimists say the world’s long-term infrastructure needs are enormous. They are also cheered by the record $100 billion or so of funds that Preqin says are currently being raised (albeit slowly). And there may be some chinks of light on the M&A front. As Greg Roumeliotis and I wrote earlier:

peHUB reports:

Forty U.S.-based venture capital firms raised just $4.3 billion in the first quarter of 2009, according to data released this morning by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association. The downside is that this represents the lowest number of funds to raise capital since Q3 2003. The upside is that the actual amount of capital raised was higher than the $3.5 billion raised in Q4 2008 (slight solace, but solace nonetheless).

Just three of the funds were first-timers, while the largest raiser was August Capital ($650m for Fund V).

In a prepared statement, NVCA president Mark Heesen said: “First, the majority of venture firms are not actively fundraising at this time because they have either recently raised a fund and are investing those dollars or are waiting until market conditions improve. Second, despite the recession, venture firms with solid track records continue to be able to secure sizable commitments from limited partners as there remains a great deal of promise for future returns from the venture capital asset class.”