• Vestar Capital Partners has closed its latest private equity fund, Vestar Capital Partners V, with total commitments of $3.7 billion. Approximately 130 institutional investors are participating in the fund, with was oversubscribed by $700 million. The buyout firm targets companies in the U.S. and Europe with valuations in the $100 million to $3 billion range.

Thirty-year-old entrepreneur Jared Polis, who has been called one of the richest young Americans, is reportedly readying to launch his own hedge fund. According to an article in the Rocky Mountain News, Polis, along with Joel Citron, expect to launch the fund in the second quarter with $100-200 million in assets under management.

California-based asset manager SoHo Capital Partners has recently launched its first hedge fund, a macro absolute return fund. Frank Troise, managing partner, described the fund as “a throw back to the old Soros, Steinhardt macro-fund.”

Think London, the official foreign direct investment agency for London, is opening its first overseas office in New York in March in an effort to entice North American firms to do business in the British capital.

Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based Urdang Capital Management is readying to launch its first hedge fund, a long/short vehicle that invests in real estate investment trusts, according to a source close to the firm. Managers at the firm did not return calls seeking details, but one industry expert did give us his thoughts on whether he thinks it is a good time to be launching a REIT hedge fund.

The rich keep getting richer, or so it seems for endowments.

Over the last decade, colleges and universities with over $1 billion in their endowments have earned an average of 12% per year, compared to those with under $25 million, which earned an average of 7.9%, according to a recent survey by the National Association of College and University Business Officers.

By Deirdre Brennan 

Alan Lenahan, senior alternative investment analyst at Fund Evaluation Group, which provides consulting and advice to institutional and high-net-worth investors, is seeing an up-tick in endowments investing directly with hedge funds.

By Deirdre Brennan

Investors may be talking about India and China as the hottest places to invest, but some experts believe that there is an overlooked goldmine of growth right here in the United States. Peter Weber, co-chair of the Fresno Regional Job Initiative and an investor in The Central Valley Fund, a private equity vehicle which invests exclusively in companies in California’s Central Valley, believes that the region is a fertile place for private equity and venture capital firms to plant their money.

Hedge fund and private equity fundraising boutique The Silverfern Group has added Lobi Powell and Christopher Slinger to its management team. Powell joins as managing director, and while Slinger joins as director.

• Chicago-headquartered Thoma Cressey Equity Partners has held a final close of its eighth fund with $765 million in commitments. The private equity firm had initially targeted $650 million for the fund, but increased the size to accommodate demand from the firm’s current investors. The fund will be invested largely in middle-market companies in the software and healthcare industries, as well as in other areas, including business services and consumer products and services. TCEP’s previous fund closed at $554 million and is expected to be fully invested the next few months.   

New York-based Falcon Henge Partners has launched a long/short equity fund, which will focus on the global consumer space.

The new fund, Falcon Henge I, is being managed by Keith McCullough and Harry Schwefel, both of whom left asset management firm Dawson-Herman Capital Management in October to set up their own shop.

Denver-based mutual fund firm Janus Capital Group is revving up to launch its first hedge fund-like product at the end of March. The fund will go long and short like a hedge fund, but it will be marketed to retail investors, not targeted at the uber-wealthy.

Chicago-based fund-of-funds firm Centripetal Asset Management is opening up its first fund, which invests in managed futures, to outside investors on Feb. 1. The Centripetal Dynamic Fund, which was launched in October 2005 with partner money, aims to attract conservative investors who are interested in hedge funds but are looking for steady returns.

A record number of hedge funds closed up shop in the first three-quarters of last year, but as 484 exited the market, more than three times as many opened their doors, according to Chicago based Hedge Fund Research.

Garrett Smith, general partner at Dallas-based hedge fund firm Spinnerhawk Capital Management, which just passed its six-month-mark with net returns of 27.5%, has seen the highs and lows of the oil industry and expects crude to settle around $75 a barrel by year-end. According to Smith, Spinnerhawk’s fund has been taking in money each month since its inception in July, and now has $40 million in assets under management.

Twelve years ago, then 34-year-old Boston native Jim Copell never dreamed of working in finance, much less owning his own asset management and research firm on Wall Street. He didn’t attend college; he never even finished high school. Next week, Copell, who spent four years with Bear Sterns as a floor trader on the New York Stock Exchange, is publishing his company’s first research reports. The reports will focus on individual industries, utilizing proprietary research based on a customized data mining system created by a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Gold prices, which rose dramatically last year and reached a 25-year record high on Monday at $550 an ounce, will likely continue to climb in 2006, partly due to pressure from hedge funds looking for alternatives to stocks, bonds and currencies, according to industry experts.

Carter Braxton Worth, a market commentator in Oppenheimer & Co.'s equity research department, says hedge funds are holding onto gold, but he doesn't see much new demand for the precious metal coming from hedge funds, at least for now.

"Hedge funds who have aggressively accumulated positions in gold appear to be resting. On a day-to-day basis, there is not much in the way of new buying," Worth said. "In the context of gold having reached a 25-year high, a lot of buyers who entered the market appear to be digesting, waiting and watching. Having established large positions over the last several months, the presumption is that gold bullion and gold mining stocks are likely to trade sideways in the days/weeks ahead."

By Deirdre Brennan 

Industry experts gathered in midtown Manhattan last week to discuss their predictions for the New Year. A few topics covered by the panel, which was organized by the New York Society of Security Analysts, were a market correction, an economic slowdown and oil and gold prices.

Market Correction: Just How Big Will It Be?

Most industry experts are expecting some sort of a stock market correction in 2006, but where they differ are in their predictions as to just how big this correction will be.

Mary Ann Bartels, director of global equity trading strategy at Merrill Lynch, believes that the market may undergo a "substantial" correction in when measured from peak to trough on an intra-year basis.

"It will likely be around 20%, but hedge funds could push volume up, which may lead to a correction as high as 25%," said Bartels.

Emerging market equity investment returns will see "a particularly sharp decline" in 2006, according to Mercer Investment Consulting's annual Fearless Forecast survey.

The survey, which polled 157 investment firms, predicts that emerging market investment returns will be approximately 9% this year, which is significantly lower that the 34% returns shown by the MSCI Emerging Markets Index in 2005.

Overall, the survey predicts that global equity markets will drop nearly 2% to a median 7.6% return in 2006 from 9.5% in 2005.

Daniel Calugar, who ran a registered broker-dealer business, has agreed to pay more that $150 million to settle fraud and market timing charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fine is the largest ever imposed on an individual in a late-trading or market-timing case, according to Randall Lee, director of the SEC's Pacific regional office.

As part of the settlement, Calugar, owner of Las Vegas-based Security Brokerage Inc., will disgorge $103 million in gains and pay a $50 million civil penalty.  

"Daniel Calugar's late trading was phenomenally profitable to him and came at the expense of long-term mutual fund shareholders," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the SEC's enforcement division, in a statement. "The magnitude of this settlement reflects both the seriousness of the wrongdoing and the commission's resolve to hold accountable those who defraud mutual-fund shareholders."