Tag Archive for Hedge Funds

Confidential Draft of U.S. Treasury “Volcker Rule” Restrictions on Proprietary Trading With Hedge Funds

The OCC, Board, FDIC, and SEC (individually, an “Agency,” and collectively, “the Agencies”) are requesting comment on a proposed rule that would implement Section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank Act”) which contains certain prohibitions and restrictions on the ability of a banking entity and nonbank financial company supervised by the Board to engage in proprietary trading and have certain interests in, or relationships with, a hedge fund or private equity fund.

2009 Hedge Fund 100

Asset totals reflect internally run, single-manager hedge funds and separate accounts, including long-only funds that charge hedge-fund-style fees; they exclude funds of hedge funds, overlay accounts, funds managed by third parties, mutual funds and traditional long-only money, dynamic money market funds, assets in collateralized debt and bond obligations, private equity and venture capital.

Barron’s 2009 Top 100 Hedge Funds

Despite a horrible year in most global markets, these 100 funds all have three-year annualized returns that run to solid double digits; a majority were up in 2008. Remarkably, one firm, Paulson, has two funds in the top four, No. 1 Paulson Advantage Plus (event-driven) and No. 4 Paulson Enhanced (merger arbitrage). In second place is Balestra Capital Partners, a global macro fund, third is Vision Opportunity Capital, a merger arbitrage fund, and fifth was Quality Capital Management-Global Diversified. Strong performance in weak markets is hedge funds’ most basic appeal and these funds did nothing to dispel that idea last year.