Benzinga's Daily Hedge Fund Briefing - January 08

UK hedge funds are in the news today. Aberdeen AM (LON:ADN) to buy RBS funds of hedge funds business: Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC said today it has agreed to sell part of its asset-management business to Aberdeen Asset Management PLC (NYSE:RBS) for $135 million, marking the latest step in a restructuring plan launched last year after RBS was bailed out by the U.K. government.

The deal involves the investment strategies funds-of-funds division of RBS Asset Management, which had assets under management worth £13.5 billion at the end of September. RBS said the sale should be completed in the first quarter this year. "Aberdeen is a well-regarded and well-established global asset manager and will be an excellent new owner for the business," RBS Finance Chief Bruce Van Saun said. Source

Another UK hedge fund in the news is Prana Capital. Prana is looking eastwards, with plans to open an office in Singapore where its founder, Peregrine Cust, will relocate, said a source familiar with the matter. "We are exploring that option," said a Prana spokesman.

"It's not imminent," he added, without going into further detail. Prana is looking to focus on the Asian markets and tap investors in the region with the impending move, said the source.Prana runs a discretionary global macro hedge fund, Prana Ltd, which was launched in 2005 by Cust. The fund, which invests in several asset classes, including Asian equities, rose 72 percent in 2009 and has about $115 million in assets, according to Lipper data. Source

Yet another UK hedge fund RAB eyes institutions to rebuild its asset base. London-listed asset manager RAB Capital (LON:RAB) is planning to rebuild its depleted asset base by targeting institutions in Europe and push the marketing of four of its strong-performing funds, following a year of dramatical restructuring of its business model.

Last year, RAB cut six hedge funds and three funds of funds, and dropped its ambitions to manage retail money. "To a certain extent a lot of the hard work has been done last year in focusing the business," RAB Chief Executive Officer Stephen Couttie said Source

Atsuko Tsuchiya, a former Merrill Lynch & Co. managing director, plans to start a new Japan-focused hedge fund in March, employing an event-driven strategy that seeks to profit from a change in government.
The Atom Japan Alpha Fund will have Hong Kong-based Penjing Asset Management Ltd. as its anchor investor, Tsuchiya said in an interview yesterday. The 37-year-old chief executive officer of Tokyo-based Atom Capital Management Co. said the fund will have about $500 million capacity and aims to open with about $20 million. Source

Swiss asset management firm Pictet & Cie has awarded a mandate to manage a convertible bond fund to former GLG Partners’ hedge fund manager Philippe Jabre, the Swiss newspaper Le Temps reports. A controversial figure, Jabre was fined in 2006 for market abuse by the UK's financial services watchdog, the FSA, after allegations relating to short positions he took in stocks of the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group in 2003. Source

Hedge funds are at the top of a list of financial career categories with fewer job postings compared to a year ago in the United States. Hedge funds job openings are down 44 percent from a year earlier, said eFinancialCareers, a unit of Dice Holdings Inc, which focuses on specialty jobs categories like finance and technology. Job postings in information technology and asset management categories are each down 28 percent from a year ago.

By contrast, job seekers in fields like derivatives and fixed income have more opportunities. Derivatives job postings are up 19 percent from a year ago; debt and fixed income postings are up 16 percent, and there are 12 percent more opening in quantitative analytics, according to eFinancialCareers. Source