Two
Major UK Schemes Join Hedge Fund Pullback - (online.wsj.com) Two of the largest pension funds in the U.K.
are cutting their exposure to hedge fundsamid a growing backlash against high fees and lackluster
performance.
The £20 billion ($32.4 billion) Railways Pension Scheme currently has £1
billion invested in hedge funds but investment director Paul Bishop said it was
looking to reduce this “significantly.” Mr. Bishop said: “We believe that hedge
funds in aggregate offer a poor trade-off between expected returns and cost.” The
£39.6 billion BT Pension Scheme has also been reassessing its position,
according to several people familiar with its thinking. These people say the
scheme’s weighting in hedge funds, which it does not disclose, is set to fall
following a restructuring of BPK Partners, the hedge fund arm of its own fund
manager Hermes, which plans to diversify into multi-asset funds. A BT
spokeswoman declined to comment on its investment in BPK, but stressed it had
no current plans to stop investing in hedge funds completely. The issue came to
the fore after Calpers, the $295 billion Californian pension fund which was one
of the first big funds to place large sums with the sector, said it would exit its $4 billion hedge fund portfolio.
Bill
Gross exit could cost Pimco $400 billion - (money.cnn.com) You
tend to find out how valuable something truly is after it's gone. For
investment house Pimco, losing "bond king" Bill Gross will likely
cost the firm billions. According to Morgan Stanley, investors could yank
a whopping $400 billion of assets from Pimco following the surprise exit of
Gross on Friday. Morgan Stanley based that huge figure on the 6% drop in the
share price of Pimco parent Allianz. The investment bank said in a report
Monday that implies a loss of around 20% of the Pimco's total assets. Pimco and
Allianz executives scrambled over the weekend and on Monday to soothe nervous
clients and analysts after Gross shocked the financial world by leaving the firm he founded in 1971 for Janus
Capital. Gross directly managed about $300 billion of assets, although Morgan
Stanley estimates he had "influence" over around $500 billion.
No
US 'chlorine chicken' in Europe - (www.cnbc.com) The
EU's nominee for health chief pledged on Tuesday to oppose the import of some
U.S. foodstuffs such as chemically treated meat that Washington hopes to be
able to sell to Europe under a planned multibillion-dollar
trans-Atlantic trade deal. In comments at his confirmation hearing in the
European Parliament that will delight EU heavyweights France and Germany, Vytenis Andriukaitis also said genetically
modified crops posed a "philosophical problem" that threatened
Europe's biodiversity. The United
States,
now in negotiations with the European Union on a free trade pact that would
create a joint market of 800 million people, wants the 28-nation bloc to take a
more science-based approach to genetically modified crops and hormone-treated
meat. "I cannot make any compromises on this issue, whether it is hormones
in meat or chlorine baths for poultry," Andriukaitis told EU lawmakers in
the hearing on his nomination to be head of health and food safety policy in
the next European Commission.
California protesters block
Israeli-owned ship – (www.cnbc.com) Officials
say a group of pro-Palestinian protesters are again blocking an Israeli-owned
ship from unloading its cargo at a port in California. International Longshore
and Warehouse Union spokesman Craig Merrilees says dockworkers at the Port of
Oakland did not unload cargo from the ZIM Shanghai on Saturday because of
safety concerns raised by the presence of police and protesters. He said the
protesters blocked workers from driving into the terminal during their morning
and evening shifts. The protesters are demonstrating in response to recent
Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip. Last month, protesters blocked cargo
from unloading off the ZIM Piraeus for nearly five days before the ship
apparently departed to Los Angeles with a partial load.
Merkel
has a duty to stop Draghi’s illegal fiscal meddling - (www.ft.com) Despite
the Bundesbank’s protests, the European Central Bank is giving Europe’s banks a leg-up. To make them fit enough for the
proposed banking union, the ECB proposes to relieve them of some of the
potentially toxic loans they have extended to the private sector, which will be
bundled into asset-backed securities and taken on to the central bank’s balance
sheet. The ECB’s preference is to purchase the better tranches of these
securities and leave the junk for the European Investment Bank. But since
politicians are not playing along, the ECB will have to hold its nose – and
complete its conversion into a bailout agency. The ECB began as a central bank
that carried out monetary policy, providing liquidity for domestic uses. But
when the financial crisis hit in 2008, banks in Ireland and southern Europe
faced a dearth of foreign loans, on which they had come to depend. The ECB
allowed national central banks in these countries to end the drought by lending
even more money against ever-weaker collateral.
Hong
Kong Protests Are a Threat to Xi and His 'Chinese Dream' - (www.bloomberg.com)
For China, Limited Tools to Quell Unrest in Hong Kong - (www.nytimes.com)
Hong Kong Protesters Defy Officials’ Call to Disperse - (www.nytimes.com)
For China, Limited Tools to Quell Unrest in Hong Kong - (www.nytimes.com)
Hong Kong Protesters Defy Officials’ Call to Disperse - (www.nytimes.com)
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