Galleon Investors Trust They'll Get Their Money Back On Time

Investors in Galleon Group's hedge funds think they will get their money back--on time and with little fuss. So far, it's looking like that might be a good call.

Galleon has largely unwound most of its positions, a person familiar with the situation told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday. The person close to Galleon said the company still expects to satisfy redemptions by Jan. 1.

Galleon decided last week to close all its hedge funds after founder Raj Rajaratnam was charged with insider trading. Rajaratnam has denied the charges. Still, many investors put in requests to redeem their positions in the funds.

Frequently, investors in funds under pressure to close seek to sell their stakes quickly, but at a discount, in the secondary market. But in this case, secondary market clearinghouse HedgeBay says it's had no inquiries from investors looking for quick buyers of their Galleon stakes. Another intermediary between buyers and sellers of hedge fund stakes says it also has had no inquiries.

One big reason investors trust Galleon to return their money without difficulty is that its hedge funds mostly own liquid securities, meaning selling stock to satisfying investor redemptions hasn't been a problem.

In past hedge fund blowups, investors have gone to HedgeBay, considered the most significant secondary market for hedge-fund stakes, to sell out of their stakes at a fraction of their value. Jared Herman, co-founder of HedgeBay, said there haven't been any Galleon stakes put up for sale on HedgeBay since Rajaratnam's arrest last Friday.

"First of all, there's not a blowup," Herman said. While the Rajaratnam scandal has rocked the industry and Galleon, Galleon's hedge funds are up this year.

Investors must weight several unknown factors, like whether regulators will uncover more questionable trades, thus making it difficult for Galleon to pay the more than $1 billion back to investors.

"People right now are placing their bets that they're going to get the money," Herman said.

Tullett Prebon, a company that among other things acts as an intermediary in secondary market transactions, hasn't gotten any calls from investors looking to buy or sell Galleon shares.

"I'm assuming, and I don't know this first hand, that it will be quite an orderly liquidation," said Neil Campbell, Tullett Prebon's head of alternative investments. He added the obvious disclaimer that unforeseen regulatory and legal issues could slow down satisfying the redemptions.

"Liquidity mismatches were driving a lot of the transactions in the secondary market," Campbell said. "Some hedge funds ended up having a quasi private equity portfolio."

In those situations, Cambpell said, investors often turned to the secondary market as quickly as possible, not knowing whether a fund's investments would ever regain any value.

In the case of Galleon, though, there wasn't much to worry about regarding the value of its top holdings, which include stocks like Apple Computer Inc. (AAPL) and Google Inc. (GOOG).

-By Joseph Checkler; Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2152; [e-mail]