Finance Weekly Updates

Hedge Funds Help Families Acquire Homes

The hedge fund community of New York has established an organization in conjunction with Habitat for Humanity whose mission is to help hard-working New York families fulfill their “once-in-a-lifetime” dream of home ownership.

These are families that without the intervention of Habitat and the support of hedge funds and private equity firms would not be able to compete for purchase of real estate in New York City.

Hedge Funds for Habitat-NYC is supported by some of the leading hedge fund and private equity firms in New York, including but not limited to:

Jason A. Press
The N.I.R. Group LLC, Corey Ribotsky,  Managing Partner
Walter Noel
PNC MultiFamily Capital
Tullett Prebon Holdings Corp
Vantage Partners

Looking for a Tax Haven: Try Delaware, USA

Coming out ahead of both Switzerland and Luxembourg, the American state of Delaware was ranked first as the most opaque tax haven by the Tax Justice Network. The TJN is an organization whose mandate is to promote transparency in international finance.

Although Switzerland received the highest score for secrecy, here called opacity, along with several other countries such as Malaysia and small Caribbean countries like Barbados, when calculated together with the country’s importance as a place of cross-border financial activity, Delaware outranked these other countries.

The outcome of the ranking is as follows:

USA (Delaware)
Luxembourg
Switzerland
Cayman Islands
United Kingdom (London)
Ireland
Bermuda
Singapore
Belgium
Hong Kong

Finance Weekly Profile: Alan Quasha

From time to time we like to profile interesting and/or successful individuals making news in the world of finance. Alan Quasha is perhaps best known for his great talent restructuring companies. Among his more recent endeavors have been the restructuring of Genius Products. Formerly owned by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Genius is an entertainment distribution company. Alan Quasha also facilitated the acquisition of the private equity operation of Lehman Brothers by the investment firm Reinet Investments.

Alan Quasha is a principal at Quadrant Management, an investment firm which focuses its resources on U.S. and emerging markets.

Alan Quasha started restructuring companies over thirty years ago when there was not much financial incentive to perform this task as an agent. Therefore, he learned early through necessity that the best approach was to become a partner in the process. This philosophy has assured many years of successful restructuring ventures and earned Alan Quasha his well-deserved excellent reputation.

Being a shy man by nature, Quasha has always avoided the limelight. He is associated with several other investment firms in addition to Quadrant, including Carret Asset Management Group and Vanterra Capital, where he is the founding principal of this global private equity fund.

Spirits Rise with Hedge Fund Gains

Hedge Fund managers have been in a good mood lately as world markets seem to head upwards, shaking off the unpleasant memories that hopefully is all that is left of 2008,one of the worst years in financial history.
The month of July alone saw the Eurekahedge Hedge Fund Index climb an additional 2.1 percent, adding another month to the five month growth streak of 2009.

To date the Index has improved an impressive 12 percent, with hopes for the rest of the year high.
Another index, the MSCI World Index soared 8.4 percent just in July bringing its year-to-date upward climb to 14%.

This extraordinary improvement relied mostly on the success of the fund managers of the Asian and emerging markets sectors.

“The month’s returns were achieved on the back of strong rallies across underlying equity markets despite a rough start to the month,” Eurekahedge wrote in its report.

This is good news to the hears of fund managers all over the world such as John Paulson, Eric Sprott of Sprott Hedge Fund

PIPE Investment Not a Pipe Dream For GM

As the financial world continues to feel the reverberations of one of the most daring, controversial and largest bailouts of a publicly traded company by the U.S. government in history, that is the General Motors decline into bankruptcy and the U.S. government’s bailout, Corey Ribotsky believes he is seeing just another PIPE investment, albeit on a grander scale.

In an opinion piece which appeared in HedgeWorld News, the managing partner and head portfolio manager of the NIR Group of Roslyn, New York, Corey Ribotsky, described the many ways in which the recent U.S. government bailout of General Motors Corporation resembles a PIPE deal which Ribotsky’s investment firm has been dealing with for years.

PIPE is an abbreviation for private investment in public equity, and according to Ribotsky’s take on the bailout, the U.S. government is investing in the publicly held equity of General Motors, or what’s left of it.