Allocations
At the end of 2014, Preqin conducted surveys with hedge fund managers, investors and alternatives investment consultants around the world to ascertain their views on the hedge fund industry over the past year and their outlook for the year ahead. Selina Sy looks at the upcoming trends and developments these industry professionals have identified for hedge funds in 2015.
Institutional investor capital will continue to flow into the hedge fund industry in 2015
Hedge fund managers forecast that industry assets under management (AUM) are set to increase this year, and surpass the figure of $3.02tn reported in December 2014. Indeed,
Shark Punch has finalised a USD1.2 million seed funding round led by Supercell investor London Venture Partners (LVP) and DN Capital.
In addition, the company is launching its new game discovery platform: Playfield.io.
Playfield is a social discovery and community platform for games. Playfield helps players find games they care about, and allows developers to connect directly with their gamer communities.
”We started the company initially to develop a new game called The Masterplan, but after many discussions with other game developers, we realized that discovery is a massive problem for both developers and players. The question is rarely
Pereg Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that operates in the United States and Israel, has completed initial fund raising for Pereg Ventures Fund I.
The firm primarily provides Series A and B financing to ventures delivering innovative market intelligence and analytics solutions for consumer-driven corporations.
"We are delighted to officially launch our initial investment fund," says Itzhak Fisher, Chairman and General Partner for Pereg Ventures. Although Pereg Ventures is a fully independent venture capital firm, Nielsen is providing a significant strategic investment in support of the fund's launch. This is part of a broader portfolio of innovation initiatives including
Eccrine Systems has raised USD1.5 million in seed funding. Investors include CincyTech Fund III, management, and other sources within the CincyTech local, regional and national investor co millionunity.
Formed in late 2013, the advanced sweat sensor company is developing disposable electronic patch systems based on innovative research and intellectual property that originated from the University of Cincinnati and Air Force Research Labs at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
“The implications for real-time trending and interpretation of sweat biomarkers, derived from very tiny amounts of sweat captured under a small electronic patch, are profound”
According to Dr Jason Heikenfeld, lead UC
“Global deal activity jumped 47% between 2013 and 2014, highlighted by large deals,” wrote John Primack in an article for Fortune.com. “Global merger and acquisition activity hit USD3.5 trillion in 2014, which is up 47% from the year before.”
Primack noted that the data from Thomson Reuters “suggests that large deals in 2014 – 95 valued at USD5 billion or more – were a key driver, given that the overall number of global M&A transactions only climbed by 6%.” Of the 15 largest acquisitions, 10 were from companies based in the United States, “where volume climbed by 51.4% to USD1.53
Cordiant, a leading emerging market private debt fund manager, has raised USD350 million at the final close of its latest debt fund, the Cordiant Emerging Loan Fund IV (CELF IV).
The fund’s primary focus will be on senior, secured loans issued to emerging market private sector borrowers, with an emphasis on diversification across countries and sectors.
Investors in the fund include insurance companies, pension funds and other provident funds.
CELF IV will allow institutional investors to take advantage of the growing imbalance in the emerging markets between the escalating demand for bank style funding and the shrinking balance
BIL Manage Invest (BMI) has selected Linedata Front Office Platform to manage the firm’s complete front-to-back asset management workflow across their full suite of investment funds.
With an increased emphasis on risk management in the industry, AIFM Directive and UCITS regulation continue to impose controls and transparency with the end goal of protecting the financial world against systemic risk. While many management companies seek comprehensive risk management around all aspects of their front-to-back activities, they also look to increase efficiencies, and provide added-value to their clients while keeping costs at an acceptable level. This is particularly true with funds under
2015 will not be any easier for fund managers from an operational perspective. The raft of regulatory reporting under Annex IV and EMIR is set to increase, depending on the size of the manager, and the barriers to entry look set to remain high for new managers; both from a compliance perspective and investor expectations on operational infrastructure.
After a lukewarm performance in 2014, where the average hedge fund returned less than 4 per cent, and large institutional investors such as CalPERS and Dutch health care sector pension fund PFZW divested their holdings, 2015 is, in many ways, a year
Strong performance in Jersey’s funds sector in 2014 has seen the value of fund assets administered in the jurisdiction increase by almost one fifth year-on-year to reach the highest level in seven years.
The latest figures for Jersey’s finance industry, collated by the Jersey Financial Services Commission (JFSC) for the period ending December 2014, show that the net asset value (NAV) of funds under administration in Jersey grew by GBP23.5bn over the final quarter of last year to now stand at GBP228.9bn, representing an increase of 19% compared to December 2013 and the highest level since December 2008. In addition,
Pan-African private equity firm 8 Miles has acquired a 42 per cent stake in Orient Bank Limited, a mid-tier commercial bank in Uganda, from Keystone Bank, a state-owned Nigerian bank.
The financial details of the transaction have not been disclosed.
The investment will be made alongside the founders of the bank, who have increased their shareholding in the bank to 49 per cent. Orient Bank Limited was founded in 1993 and provides banking, stockbroking and other related financial services to retail and corporate customers in Uganda, a country in which 80 per cent of the population is currently estimated to
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12 November, 2026 – 8:00 am
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