John Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox and founder of the Boca Raton, Florida-based commodity trading adviser J.W. Henry, will no longer manage money for outside clients. The firm had managed $2.6 billion back in 2006 but has since shrunk significantly due to a run of poor performance. “The firm has been small since 2007 and once assets fell below $100 million this year the company became too small to sustain itself,” Mr. Henry wrote in an e-mail to the Wall Street Journal. The firm’s five trading programs have lost between 1 and 21 percent this year.
Brevan Howard lured away a young hotshot from Credit Suisse. Josh Bertman, a 29 year-old mortgage bond trader, has joined the European hedge fund giant’s New York office after leaving Credit Suisse last month. Forbes magazine named Bertman to its 30-under-30 list of promising young professionals.
An emerging markets manager has launched a hedge fund to place bets on the volatile Greek economy. Dromeus Capital’s new fund plans to buy government debt and the bonds and stock of companies it thinks will fare best during a recession.
Singapore-based Woori Absolute Partners is raising $200 million for a new seeding fund that will invest in Asian hedge funds. The fund is a joint venture with France-based NewAlpha.
So much for activism. One day after it was urged by hedge fund TPG-Axon to find ways to boost the stock price, SandRidge Energy said it plans to sell its Permian Basin oil fields. Investors obviously don’t think it is a good idea. The stock got hammered on Friday, dropping nearly 10 percent after falling as much as 20 percent in early trading.
