Man Investments Group | Hedge Fund Tracker Notes | 1 Page Guide

Man Investments

Man Investments | Hedge Fund Notes

Here is a collection of links to resources and articles on Man Investments as part of our Hedge Fund Tracker Tool .

Resource #1 5.22.09 Man Group, the world's largest listed hedge fund firm, is likely to extend the independent valuation of its flagship AHL strategy to calm investors spooked by Madoff, sources familiar with the matter said.

AHL, a $25 billion (16 billion pounds) family of managed futures funds which bet on trends in global futures markets, currently uses a mixture of internal and external administrators to value its constituent funds, which tend to be in liquid and easier-to-value markets. source

Resource #2: (4.3.09) Increased regulation of hedge funds will drive some out of business and lead to a shrinkage of the industry, according to the chief executive of Man Group, the UK's biggest listed hedge fund manager.

Peter Clarke said smaller managers who did not have the resources to cope with additional demands from watchdogs would be hit hardest. He said Man, which estimated that pre-tax profits for the year to the end of this month would drop to a third of last time's level, was well-placed to cope with additional controls. source

Resource #3: (2.3.09) It's all rather embarrassing for Man Group, the world's largest quoted hedge fund manager. It seems that its flagship RMF Four Seasons Strategies Fund invested $360 million with Bernard Madoff, despite the fact that nobody at the company had actually met him since 2001.

Instead, Man apparently was content to settle for meetings with Tremont Capital Management, the American fund manager through which it gained exposure to the alleged fraudster.

Standard & Poor's, the ratings agency whose lead fund analyst Randal Goldsmith uncovered this shabby state of affairs, is now mulling whether to cut the “double A” rating on the fund.

This would seem a perfectly reasonable reaction. The rating is intended partly to indicate whether the managers conduct proper due diligence when deciding with which hedge funds to place client money. source

Resource #4: (1.22.09) Man Group Plc, the biggest publicly traded hedge fund manager said funds under management dropped 21 percent in the fourth quarter.

Funds under management dropped to $53.3 billion at Dec. 31 from $67.6 billion at the end of September, the London-based company said in a statement today. source

Resource #5: (12.3.08) Man Group has made a few changes involving the merger of two of its core investment strategies: Glenwood Capital Investments and Man Global Strategies.

The new combined business, dubbed Man Glenwood Strategies, will merge the investment, manager relationships and research network behind the Glenwood model, with the operational, investor service and managed account infrastructure of Man Global Strategies. source

Resource #6: (11.8.08) Shares in Man Group lost over a third of their value Thursday after the hedge fund manager reported a sharp and unexpected decline in funds under management and said redemptions by private investors have accelerated in the past couple of months.

Net income for the first half ended Sept. 30 dropped 79% to $507 million from $2.47 billion in the year earlier period, which also included a $1.8 billion gain from the spin-off of its MF Global (MF) brokerage unit. Excluding the year-ago gain, first-half pretax profit was down 24% at $622 million as the weak markets meant the group earned less in performance fees.

But the main worry for investors was the sharp drop in funds under management, which fell 9% to $67.6 billion in the period. Man Group had forecast funds under management would be around $70.3 billion.

There have also been further falls in the past few weeks and the figure is estimated at $61 billion at the start of November, Man Group (UK:EMG: news, chart, profile) said.
Shares in the hedge-fund manager slumped 34% in afternoon London trading. The stock is down around 55% since the start of the year. Source

Resource #7: (11.5.08) A pioneering collaboration that brings together the best of the academic and finance worlds has been such a success that the venture has outgrown its premises, just a year after its establishment.

Man Group plc, one of the world’s largest alternative investment companies, founded the Man Research Laboratory ("MRL"), in Oxford in September 2007. The role of MRL is to undertake commercial research projects for the various quantitative groups within Man, and in particular, for its wholly owned subsidiary fund manager AHL. Although quantitative techniques are widely used throughout Man, it is within AHL that they have been used extraordinarily successfully for more than twenty years.

The laboratory was established at the same time as the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance ("OMI"), which is part of the University of Oxford. Man provides the principal funding (an initial commitment of GBP 13.75 million - $21.9 million) for the institute, which shares common facilities with the laboratory.

"The partnership between Man and the University of Oxford is unique," said Dr Anthony Ledford, a senior executive at AHL and Research Director of MRL. "While other hedge fund managers have opened their own, private research centres, none has done so in partnership with the University of Oxford itself."

"The aim for both the University and Man is to create a stimulating environment of research and innovation, where ideas flourish," Dr Ledford continues. "Practitioners from a wide spectrum of disciplines can bring their skills into collaboration, and learn from each other."

Staff numbers are expected to double over the coming year. OMI, which brings together academics from a wide spectrum of Oxford University departments, already has fourteen faculty members, another fourteen associate members and four permanent academic staff - three research fellows and the institute’s Director - along with twelve higher-degree students.

"The collaboration has been a great success", Dr Ledford added. "It has exceeded the expectations of both the University and Man. Planned staffing levels in both the laboratory and the institute were met ahead of schedule, and the number of applications for positions has necessitated a search for larger premises." Source


Resource #8: Man Group warned profits would fall for its half year that ends today as the largest listed hedge fund nanagera saw lower performance at its biggest fund. Shares in Man hit their lowest in three years falling 68¼p, more than 18 per cent, to 305½p, as funds under management tumbled $4.3bn in six months to $70.3bn (£38.1bn). Man said earnings per share excluding exceptional items were likely to be 5 per cent down on the 34.1 cents achieved in the same period last year, hit by the weak performance of AHL, its biggest hedge fund. Net performance fees would fall about 40 per cent, Man said, from $283m a year before.

However, Peter Clarke, chief executive, said sales had remained strong and the rate of client withdrawals was not up significantly. "To have sold as much product in the second quarter as the first quarter in the teeth of these financial markets is testament to the strength of our distribution," he said. AHL, which tries to catch trends in commodity and other futures prices, has given back almost all of its gains for the year after commodity prices crashed over the summer then unexpectedly spiked again. For the year to September 24, AHL was up 0.9 per cent.

Man's main funds of hedge funds have all fallen, with Chicago-based Glenwood down 5.8 per cent, Man Global Strategies off 10.8 per cent and RMF down 2.5 per cent, amid a general rout in the hedge fund sector. Analysts cut profit forecasts further after downgrades last week. Numis Securities, which lopped 11 per cent off its prediction of next year's earnings, said it expected Man to benefit long term as the hedge fund sector became less competitive.

Mr Clarke said hedge funds would face more regulation as market watchdogs increased oversight of the financial world after bank collapses. But he said Man - already highly regulated - was likely to cope better than most with that, as well as having enough cash to be able to buy stakes in other funds. Last night Man spent about £9.4m buying back 3m of its shares at 312.2p. Source

Resource #9:
Man Investments has announced the development of an online hedge fund trading platform called MI Trade. This allows advisers to manage hedge fund investments as if they were bonds or stocks with the ability to rebalance portfolios at a days notice instead of waiting for weekly or monthly or quarterly redemption dates. Only Man Group products are being offered on this platform and it is being offered for free.

The CEO of Man Investments John Morrison called it "a major leap forward for hedge funds that gives Man Investments a strong competitive advantage. Investors can now, at no extra cost, actively and easily trade hedge funds as part of an overall portfolio of stocks, property and bonds."

Sometimes companies release PR that is mostly fluff, this is not one of those times. This is a major step forward towards more transparency and flexibility and the ability to trade hedge funds on a daily basis will be valued highly by the family office and wealth management community.

There are other hedge funds scrambling to put something together to compete against this. What starts as proprietary in the investment world eventually becomes open source, it is only a matter of time before there is a platform that hosts unaffiliated hedge fund products and allows them to be traded at any time in the day.

Resource #10: In response to investor nervousness about the new bans on short-selling in Britain and the United States, hedge fund firm Man Group said it shouldn’t have much of an impact on its fund performance. The firm said in a statement that it had about 14% of its assets allocated to equity long-short, the strategy that is most affected by restrictions on short selling. It said that compared to the industry average of 33% allocated to long-short. Its overweight allocation is to managed futures, which it did not expect to be affected by the short restrictions, Man Group said. The publicly listed firm’s share price dropped about 13% from the beginning of the week to the close of trading Wednesday. Long-short was already struggling this year even before the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority and the Securities and Exchange Commission put their bans against short selling financial institutions into effect. The strategy was down 6.59% year-to-date according to the HFN Long-Short Equity Average. Man Group also said that it did not expect any material impact for the funds from counterparty exposure to Lehman Bros. or AIG. Man Group has about $79.5 billion in assets under management. Source

10 Additional Resources on Man Investments:

• Tiny article about Thomas Della Casa, head of research at Britain's Man Investments, said that banks are going to show even less profits this year due to sub prime mortgages- time to short sell many U.S investment stocks due to recession.
• Article about how Man investments successfully launched Man AHL Guaranteed Futures 3 for Hong Kong (28.8 percent return past 18 months). Minimum investment of 5,000 USD, so average Joe can still invest.
• This article is about the positive outlook for man investments through 2008. Energy futures are the craze due to rising energy costs and a market slowdown- temporarily reducing options price levels, but the price level is expected to rise.
• Very short article about Leslie Osborn, a futures broker, is the newly appointed chief compliance officer of man investments.
• Interesting article about The CEO-Morrison steps down to retire.
• This Article is about Man Investments using Infodynes Tips plus program to integrate Bloomberg, making Bloomberg more efficient and cheaper to use.
• This article is about how man investments just launched a $1.5 alternate energy fund with the Abu Dhabi government.
• An article on how Uwe Eberle is now CEO of Man Investments in the USA. He used to be CEO at Citibank.
• Man Investments wins best hedge fund company at banker Middle East industry awards 2008.
• This article is about the uncertainty in global markets, but Man Investments is investing in the Middle East and North Africa.
• An Article about Man Investments products having a solid demand in the first quarter, and is expected to increase later this year.
• This article talks about how Man Investment purchased a 25% stake in Bermuda Based Company, Nephila Capital.
• Another short article about Dugald Eadie selling 21,875 shares of Man Investment stock.
• An article on how the turbulent market has given Man Investments good results also is confident about new investors in the company.

- Richard

Subscribe To this Blog via Email | Or RSS

Articles related to Man Investments:

1. Man Annual Hedge Fund Report
2. Hedge Fund Due Diligence
3. Diversified Investment Advisors
4. Hedge Fund Jobs
5. Hedge Fund Managers
6. Prime Brokerage Asia
7. Hedge Fund Expert
8. Hedge Fund Employment
9. Hedge Fund Strategy
10. Investment Book Reviews

Tags: Man Investments, Man Investments New York, Man Investments London, Man Investments Inc., Man Investments LLC, Man Investments Chicago, Man Investments USA, Man Investments Limited, Man Investment Products, Man Investments Australia, Man Investment Group