Features

Roger Beutler is a principal at Saggezza Investment Management, which he co-founded with Patrick J. Morrell. The firm is gearing up to launch its first fund, a long/short fund-of-hedge funds, later this year. Beutler, who has years of experience in the financial industry working on manager selection, spoke with FINalternatives and told us what he looks for in a manager, what causes him to reject a manager, and why his new fund is unique.

By Deirdre Brennan 

Where some see chaos, Brian Riley sees opportunity. The managing partner of JB Investments Management, which opened up its fund to outside investors in September 2005 and now has $10 million in assets under management, puts a unique spin on distressed debt by targeting industry segments undergoing significant changes.

By Deirdre Brennan 

President George Bush went on a widely-publicized energy tour this week, visiting three states to discuss his new energy initiative, which includes commitments to increase investment in clean technologies and alternative energies. Democrats blasted the tour as a “publicity stunt,” noting that only one day before the president’s tour of the The National Renewable Research Center in Colorado, a government grant for the facility that had been cut last month was partially restored.

By Deirdre Brennan 

The Canadian hedge fund industry has taken a few knocks over the past year with various scandals, most notably the collapse of Portus Alternative Asset Management and the sudden disappearance of its manager, Boaz Manor, who fled to Israel. But behind the splashy headlines lies another hedge fund story, one of a small but steadily growing industry.

By Deirdre Brennan 

John Dionne, chief investment officer of Blackstone Group’s newly-formed Distressed Securities Advisors Group and a senior managing director at the firm, has watched the industry evolve dramatically over the last decade and believes that institutional investors have finally come to accept distressed debt as an integral part of their portfolios.

By Deirdre Brennan 

Small hedge funds mean big business for companies catering specifically to their needs. Increasingly, service providers are taking notice of this segment of the hedge fund industry, which includes firms with 1 to 5 employees managing under $50 million in assets.

"The large prime brokers have ignored or don't want to deal with the smaller clients; they obviously want the large, behemoth hedge funds," said Robert Miles, managing partner of Wonderdog Capital, a small long/short equity hedge fund that he founded in 2002. His firm currently uses online broker BrownCo, and does not employ a prime broker or an administrator.

By Deirdre Brennan 

Emerging hedge fund managers hoping to increase their assets under management may have to relinquish some of their autonomy in order to succeed, according to industry experts gathered this week at the Hedge Fund Incubation and Seeding Conference in Manhattan.

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.

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.

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."