Fortress Investment Group LLC

Fortress Investment Group LLC - Hedge Fund

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Resource #1: (3.18.09) The Fortress Investment Group, the beleaguered private investment firm, said Monday that it lost $258 million in its fourth quarter, amid investment losses and withdrawals from investors. Its assets under management dropped 10 percent, to $29.5 billion.

Fortress said that it had reserved $299 million for potential write-downs and the clawback of obligations. It also said that it had amended its financing agreements with lenders and paid down some of its debt to leave $604 million outstanding. source

Resource #2: (2.5.09) The five hotshots who took Fortress Investment Group public were worth billions at first. Today they look like arrogant showboats, and their story helps explain why hedge funds are imploding by the thousands—and why there’s still a truckload of money to be made.

It used to be that to become a billionaire, rather than a mere millionaire, you had to inherit money, or build an empire that would last for a long, long time. But in the era that has just ended, you could become a billionaire just by managing other people’s money. You didn’t have to do so for very long—and, maybe, you didn’t even have to do so very well. source

Resource #3: (12.8.08) If there’s one alternative investments firm that doesn’t need its name dragged through the mud right now, it’s Fortress Investment Group. But the New York firm, already facing huge redemption requests and a collapsing stock price, finds itself at the middle of the bizarre tale of the New York lawyer arrested in Toronto for allegedly impersonating another lawyer.

Marc Dreier was arrested last week, accused of pretending to be Michael Padfield, a lawyer for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The alleged thespian turn by Dreier took place during a meeting between the OTPP and Fortress at the pension’s Toronto headquarters. source

Resource #4 (12.5.08) Tough luck, Fortress Investment Group basically said to investors seeking to pull their money from the company.

Directors of Fortress Investment Group (FIG) voted to temporarily suspend pending redemptions after investors asked to pull out roughly $3.5 billion by year's end from its Drawbridge funds, nearly as much as the vehicles have in assets.

In other words, Fortress's hedge-fund shareholders won't be getting their money back for a while, and investors in the company didn't take the news well. source

Resource #5: (11.16.08) The hedge fund of billionaire investor George Soros increased its stake in Brazilian state-run oil company Petroleo Brasileiro ( Petrobras) to 21.1 million American Depositary Receipts as of Sept. 30 from 11.5 million at June 30.

Soros Fund Management LLC made the move as the ADRs tumbled during the quarter to about $44 from about $71 each. Although the fund added nearly 10 million ADRs to its Petrobras stake, the value of the holding only rose to $930.7 million from $811.5 million.

Since the end of the quarter, Petrobras ADRs have fallen further, closing on Friday at $21.45.

The Petrobras stake was by far the largest in the Soros fund's reported holdings, which totaled $3.8 billion at Sept. 30, up from $3.7 billion at June 30. source

Resource #6: Fortress Investment Group LLC, a New York-based manager of private-equity and hedge funds, won't pay a third-quarter dividend to shareholders, saying the money can be better spent by investing in financial companies.

``Given the significant dislocations in the world's financial markets, we see tremendous opportunities for the firm to invest capital,'' Fortress Chief Executive Officer Wesley Edens said in a statement today. ``We are focused on potential investments in banks, insurance companies and other asset- management businesses.''

Fortress has risen 38 percent in the past two weeks in New York trading as investors anticipate private-equity and hedge- fund firms will profit from financial turmoil by snapping up companies and assets at distressed prices. Fortress rose 51 cents, or 3.9 percent, to $13.50 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading today.

Private-equity firms are shifting from the large leveraged buyouts that dominated Wall Street during 2006 and 2007, raising funds to snap up distressed debt and mortgage securities. Fortress oversees about $35 billion. Fortress had paid a dividend of 22.5 cents a share for the past five quarters. The payout for the second quarter was $91.5 million. Fortress Investment Group LLC, the manager of $18 billion in hedge funds, will open a fund to invest in the Middle East and North Africa as countries in the region seek to reduce their dependence on the oil industry. Source

Resource #7: The Fortress MENA Fund LP will be managed by Philippe Peress and is set to begin trading by the end of September, according to marketing documents, which didn't say how much money the company is seeking to raise. Peress, based in Geneva, has been a managing director and partner of the company's Drawbridge Global Macro funds since 2003.

``Historically MENA was characterized by low investment rates relative to Asian peers,'' New York-based Fortress said in the documents, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News. ``This is beginning to change as governments use petro-dollars to diversify the economies away from oil.''

Middle East economies, benefiting from oil prices that tripled in the past five years, will expand 9.2 percent in 2008 as revenue spurs spending on infrastructure such as airports and power plants, New York-based Morgan Stanley has forecast. That's more than double the International Monetary Fund's 4.8 percent global growth projection. Read more...

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