Conduity Capital Share Discussion Threads

[wiseacre] 07/4/2006 11:21

A bit mean Mr X to call Charlemagne a one trick pony given the number of funds it has established and the number of countries, private equity deals and opportunities available. A wall of money is pouring into Eastern Europe and asset values are rising. A further fillip will come next yeaer with the admission of Bulgaria and Romania to the EU.

I wonder whether the current indigestion in the share price is caused by sales of former director Peter Everington. If so the share price should soon recover and it is worth noticing UBS "stabilisation" mandate.

[mister x] 06/4/2006 21:24

m4m, lol, no idea, obviously the "ghost". odd hey.

Just got my tickets for the Utd v Sunderland game for good fri - goal fest coming up! ;-)

will be nice to see the new quadrants.

[m4m] 06/4/2006 18:36

Welcome to the thread fellas.

I'm not a holder at the mo but am watching it with a view to a punt ;)

btw who took post no. 6 ? lol!

[schalin] 06/4/2006 15:14

Great information here!

[mister x] 06/4/2006 15:14

wiseacre, its not that impressive in comparison to other emerging market hedge funds out there. One trick pony imo and not impressive at that!

[wiseacre] 06/4/2006 15:05

Well! Nice to be the first to post. This fund management group specialising in the emerging markets of Eastern Europe has a lot going for it. Puzzling to see it go to a discount. Obviously broker UBS only interested in placing stock with institutiuons but it deserves a retail following.

[m4m] 05/4/2006 18:20

Hedge Funds Are Defying Soros, Gross Predictions: Matthew Lynn

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Too greedy. Too many of them. Too much competition. Those were just a few of the reasons why such financial gurus as George Soros and Bill Gross were telling us the booming hedge-fund industry was running out of steam.

There's just one snag. It hasn't happened -- and right now it doesn't look like it will anytime soon.

Instead, hedge funds -- loosely regulated groups of wealthy investors who use risky strategies to try to earn high returns -- are roaring ahead. New ones are being started, performance has recovered, and fund managers are making initial public offerings. Share prices are up. On any measure you care to look at, the hedge funds are doing better than ever.

``What we are seeing is a fresh boom for the industry,'' Jacob Schmidt, director of London-based consulting firm Schmidt Research Partners, said in a telephone interview. ``The hedge funds have now moved into the mainstream of asset management.''

Rewind a year or so, and there was no shortage of people predicting the heyday of the industry was coming to a close. The talk was of sunsets, not sunrises.

Gross, who runs the world's biggest bond fund at Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., said in August 2004 that increasing competition, excessive fees and too much borrowed money would slow the growth of hedge funds. ``They're risky and they're generally overpriced,'' he said.

That same month, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein published a note saying the hedge-fund business was a bubble that had probably reached its peak.

`Too Popular'

And Soros, who can claim to have popularized if not invented the industry, sounded equally gloomy about the prospects of his younger imitators ever making the same kind of money he did. ``Hedge funds have become a little too popular,'' he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January. ``It may be more difficult to set up a new hedge fund.''

Indeed, there are still important people humming from the same song sheet. Swiss central bank policy maker Philipp Hildebrand said in a speech last month that hedge funds were due for ``a definite cleanout.''

Hold on. Are we living on the same planet?

Money is pouring into the funds. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s annual survey of the industry last month said investors expected a 28 percent increase in the assets they put into hedge funds this year. There was evidence of ``increasing participation of institutional, liability-driven investors,'' Tim Morgan, a Goldman Sachs managing director, said in a statement.

$1 Trillion

New funds are starting up at a record rate. In Europe, 330 of them were founded in 2005, compared with 250 in 2004, according to EuroHedge magazine. Assets raised in the new funds jumped 22 percent. Worldwide, 8,661 hedge funds managed $1.1 trillion at the end of 2005, according to Chicago-based Hedge Fund Research Inc.

The publicly listed funds are doing great. If you had bought shares in Man Group Plc at the start of April last year -- at the peak of that ``bubble'' -- you would have done well: They were valued at about 1,400 pence then, and are now at about 2,500 pence. Last week, Man Group said profit exceeded analyst estimates in the past 12 months as assets under management rose.

Likewise, RAB Capital Plc. Its shares have jumped from about 39 pence last May to more than 78 pence now.

No surprise then that more hedge-fund managers are selling shares to the public. Last week, Charlemagne Capital Ltd. listed its stock in London, and Partners Group, which manages both hedge and private-equity funds, did the same in Switzerland last month. Partners Group stock rose 33 percent on the first day of trading.

Flawed Forecasts

We all make lousy calls sometimes. It is a hazard of the forecaster's trade. Yet few events have been as widely predicted as the bursting of the hedge-fund bubble -- or as consistently wrong. Nothing else in the financial universe has splattered so much egg on so many distinguished faces, except perhaps the technology-stock crash that started in 2000 and lasted more than two years.

There may be a touch of jealousy in some of the remarks. After all, it is irritating for everyone to see so much money being made so quickly.

Yet there is more to it than that.

Most people have viewed the hedge-fund industry as some kind of scam. The fees -- typically the fund managers collect 20 percent of the profits they make -- are usually perceived as excessive. The risks seem too high, since hedge funds often borrow money to put into derivatives that are already highly geared. And the types of investments often seem esoteric.

Like any house of cards, they figure, it is bound to collapse one day.

Investor Demand

In reality, hedge funds are a lot more robust than that. The industry has grown because it reflects what people now want. The days when investing just consisted of putting money into equities, bonds and real estate are long since gone. There are now many instruments such as derivatives, commodities, currencies and private equity. Investors want access to all of them.

Last month, the U.K.'s Financial Services Authority said it may open hedge-fund investing to individuals under rules similar to those that cover mutual funds. ``Given the reality of the contemporary retail market, it seems sensible to permit the marketing of funds of hedge funds,'' Clive Briault, the FSA's managing director for retail markets, said in March.

Investors don't want to just match a benchmark. Most aim to preserve their capital, and make a profit as well. They don't mind paying generous fees to fund managers who can deliver that. Indeed, they are also suspicious of money managers who don't have their own financial wellbeing tied to the fund they run.

The growth of hedge funds reflects genuine demand for a different type of investment.

The bubble may burst one day -- just as one day we may decide we don't need cars or computers anymore. It is a long way off. Ignore the predictions of a hedge-fund demise. The industry has a lot of growth left in it yet.




To contact the writer of this column:
Matthew Lynn in London at [e-mail].

Last Updated: April 4, 2006 19:12 EDT

[aspex] 04/4/2006 07:42

See the other thread