The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) has released its first report using data gathered by CIMA's new electronic reporting system. The Investment Statistics Digest reviews Cayman Islands-regulated funds for the financial year 2006. It contains aggregate statistics for over 5,000 funds including their financial position, structure, investment strategies, subscription activity, fund administration and investment management services.
Australia investment managers are grouped in the Asian region alongside managers from Bahrain, Mauritius, Israel, India, Indonesia, China, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Thailand and New Zealand.
Report Highlights
1. The aggregate net asset value of the Cayman funds captured was US$1.387 trillion.
2. New York had the largest concentration of net assets held by investment managers with US$388 billion or 28%.
3. The UK, predominantly London, had the second largest concentration of net assets managed with a total of US$250 billion, or 18%.
4. Sixty-one percent of the funds reporting had a minimum subscription of US$500,000 or more.
5. The Cayman Islands was the primary location for the provision of administration services to the funds.
6. Multi-strategy (29%) and Long/short equity (27%) were the top two investment strategies of the reporting funds.
7. A master-feeder structure was used by 50% of the funds.
8. Total subscriptions and redemptions were US$760 billion and US$483 billion respectively.
9. The proportion of funds suspending trading was extremely low at 0.1%.
For an industry often regarded as secretive, this information from the regulator of the dominant offshore hedge fund domicile is very important. CIMA plan to release annual updates.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
AIMA's Survey of Superannuation Funds
AIMA has published an update to its 2004 survey of superannuation funds. The results are posted to its website. Click here to review. In summary while the survey published in 2006 (see my earlier post titled "Australian Superannuation Funds use of Hedge Funds") had indicated that superannuation funds were planning to lift their weight to hedge funds in coming years, in fact in the event 2008 weights were little changed from the weights in 2004.
Given that generally capacity is not a limiting factor the likely reason is likely to be simply the time it takes to implement change or the difficulty coming to terms with (understanding) the opportunities available.
One notable change was the introduction in some respondents of dedicated staff of up to 5 people whose job it is to monitor and evaluate alternatives. This suggests that the forecast increase in weight (from around 2.5% to 3.5% on average) will likely occur over coming years, although the new target is lower than when the last survey was taken.
In terms of quantum, 20% of 200 funds invited to respond did respond. These funds were biased to large funds and represented approx $100 billion of superannuation savings. An increase of 1% would thus add about $1billion to hedge fund investments.
More than 30% of responding funds had allocations in excess of 5%. Reflecting the nature of the respondents, these investments were primarily global and invested with large institutional fund of fund providers. The allocation to Australia was only 10.6% and to boutiques (single or multi strategy) was very small (5.6%). Fund of funds are expected to lose market share compared with single/multi strategy funds in coming years, but not markedly.
Funds regard operational experience, team breadth and business experience most highly (expertise), ahead of transparency and governance and certainly ahead of the brand value of the firm.
Most interest was expressed in long/short equity, distressed and emerging market strategies.
While advisers have the most influence in the hedge fund allocation decision, the survey didn't cast any new light on the role they play.
Given that generally capacity is not a limiting factor the likely reason is likely to be simply the time it takes to implement change or the difficulty coming to terms with (understanding) the opportunities available.
One notable change was the introduction in some respondents of dedicated staff of up to 5 people whose job it is to monitor and evaluate alternatives. This suggests that the forecast increase in weight (from around 2.5% to 3.5% on average) will likely occur over coming years, although the new target is lower than when the last survey was taken.
In terms of quantum, 20% of 200 funds invited to respond did respond. These funds were biased to large funds and represented approx $100 billion of superannuation savings. An increase of 1% would thus add about $1billion to hedge fund investments.
More than 30% of responding funds had allocations in excess of 5%. Reflecting the nature of the respondents, these investments were primarily global and invested with large institutional fund of fund providers. The allocation to Australia was only 10.6% and to boutiques (single or multi strategy) was very small (5.6%). Fund of funds are expected to lose market share compared with single/multi strategy funds in coming years, but not markedly.
Funds regard operational experience, team breadth and business experience most highly (expertise), ahead of transparency and governance and certainly ahead of the brand value of the firm.
Most interest was expressed in long/short equity, distressed and emerging market strategies.
While advisers have the most influence in the hedge fund allocation decision, the survey didn't cast any new light on the role they play.
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