Vikram Chopra spent the past three years building an online furniture-shopping site for Indian consumers that was funded mainly by annual capital injections from a German technology incubator.

But during the past few months, investor interest in the site, FabFurnish.com, has soared, said the 32-year-old entrepreneur, who is based in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. Several global venture-capital firms and hedge funds have said they are interested in investing, and Mr. Chopra is now considering another round of funding that would exceed the $20 million raised so far—even though he doesn’t expect FabFurnish to be profitable for another two years and doesn’t yet need the cash.

“A few years ago, everybody wanted to see profitability upfront,” said Mr. Chopra. “Today, it is more like how much money you need to curb the competition [and] kill everyone else.”

Global money is flooding into Indian startups as investors search for a successor to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the Chinese e-commerce company that raised a record $25 billion in its initial public offering last year.

To read the entire article from the Wall Street Journal, click here.

The post Indian Startups Gather Interest and Venture Funding From BrokerDealers Everywhere appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

New Arizona Coyote owner, Andrew Barroway (Left)

After two failed attempts, a managing partner at a hedge fund has finally reached an agreement with the NHL team Arizona Coyotes to become a team owner.

Call it a “Miracle on Ice.”

In his third attempt, hedge-fund manager A

has finally reached an agreement to acquire a majority share of an NHL franchise.

Barroway, a managing partner of Merion Investment Management, now owns 51% of the Arizona Coyotes and is the team’s chairman and governor.

This was the third attempt by Barroway to purchase an NHL team in the last two years. In 2012, a deal with the New Jersey Devils fell through. Last summer, he was certain he’d acquired a majority stake in the New York Islanders, but the team’s owner Charles Wang decided to sell to Jonathan Ledecky and Scott Malkin at the last-minute. This prompted a lawsuit by Barroway against the Islanders owner; however, the case was dropped as the Merion partner began his latest pursuit in Arizona.

Still, it wasn’t easy for Barroway to complete his three-year journey toward NHL ownership. Last month, multiple sources indicated that the deal was in jeopardy on news that Barroway was prepared to back out of a reported $155 deal. The Globe and Mail’s James Mirtle wrote that Barroway’s principle interest in “buying [the team] was to flip it.”

The New York Post reported in the fall that Barroway planned to resell the team to an ownership group that wants to move the team to Las Vegas. That news coincided with a report that NHL committed to a Las Vegas owner’s plan to hold a season-ticket drive to measure possible interest for a team in Nevada.

However, Barroway denied speculation that he would flip the team during an interview with Fox Sports last week.

“I am buying this team because I am a lifelong sports and hockey fan,” Barroway said. “It has always been my dream to become an owner. I want to bring a winner to the Valley. That [report] couldn’t be any more false. I am thrilled to be here and am thrilled to be an owner and would not have gone through this difficult process in buying a team just to go flip it.”

Barroway said he plans on being an active owner while remaining engaged in his day-to-day role at his fund. Merion Investment Management has more than $1 billion in assets under management.

For the original article from FINalternatives, click here.

The post Third Time The Charm For Hedge Fund Manager Dreaming of Being NHL Owner appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

As part of the membership to Brokerdealer.com, members have free access to an investor database that offers access to many different types of investors including hedge funds. When picking your next investor, whether it be on a national or international level, be sure to pick an investor who you can trust and won’t lose all of the company’s assets like the Russian hedge fund, Blackfield Capital CJSC recently experienced.

Blackfield Capital CJSC was one of Moscow’s hottest hedge funds, hosting glitzy parties and embarking on ambitious plans to expand to the U.S.

The firm’s founder in 2013 even rented a Manhattan apartment for a record-setting price, according to a real-estate broker, and instructed his U.S. staff to buy a $300,000 sports car.

Now, the founder is missing, allegedly along with all of the firm’s assets, according to former employees, in an international mystery that has captivated Moscow’s investment community.

The firm’s employees didn’t know anything was amiss until mid-October, when three men charged into Blackfield’s offices in an upscale complex along the Moscow River in central Moscow, said people who were there.

The men, who didn’t identify themselves, said they were looking for Blackfield’s 29-year-old founder, , according to the people who were there.

But Mr. Karapetyan wasn’t in the office that day or the next, when senior executives explained to the staff of about 50 that there was no longer any money to pay their salaries, said one former senior executive and ex-employees. The executives disclosed that all the money in the company accounts—some $20 million, including investor cash—was also missing, they said. It couldn’t be determined whether investors were from Russia or other countries.

“Our CEO just…disappeared,” said Sergey Grebenkin, one of the firm’s software developers, in an interview.

Efforts to reach Mr. Karapetyan by phone, email and through associates and friends weren’t successful. Other senior executives didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Karapetyan hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing. It couldn’t be determined whether the firm was still operating.

Interviews with more than a dozen former employees and executives at rival investment firms in Russia, as well as documents from the U.S., Russia and the U.K., provide a look at the firm’s demise.

Blackfield was launched in 2009 with plans to be on the cutting edge of modern markets. The firm focused on algorithmic trading, or the use of statistical analysis to detect patterns in the markets, on the Moscow Stock Exchange. By 2013, Blackfield traded as much as 2% of futures and options contracts on the Moscow exchange some days, according to former employees and rival firms. Several former employees said Mr. Karapetyan told them the firm once managed as much as $300 million.

For Hope’s entire Wall Street Journal article, click here.

The post Like Magic! Russian Hedge Fund’s Money and Boss Disappear appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

A hedge-fund manager says an unusual culprit contributed to his firm’s demise: high-frequency traders.

Rinehart Capital Partners LLC, which had been backed by hedge-fund veteran Lee Ainslie and specialized in emerging-markets stock-picking, is closing, according to a letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In the letter, Rinehart founder Andrew Cunagin aligned himself with those who have been critical of the rise of fast-moving traders.

“This is a circus market rigged by HFT and other algorithmic traders who prey on the rational behavior of warm-blooded investors,” Mr. Cunagin wrote, referring to the high-speed traders who have attracted wide attention this year for the alleged advantages they hold over more traditional investors.

Mr. Cunagin, 43, said in an interview from Cape Town, South Africa, where he was scouting potential future investments, that there was “clear evidence of penetration” by high-frequency traders in the stock markets of South Korea and Mexico, among other areas.

“You can see the evidence of dark pool trading…you’ll see half the day’s trading volume occur in the last seconds of trading,” he said. “There’s just evidence that this is not a level playing field.”

Rinehart, based in Nashville, Tenn., had less than $100 million under management this summer. It joins other stock-picking hedge funds that have thrown in the towel in recent months, such as Emrys Partners LP, managed by financial-crisis star Steve Eisman, and an effort from private-equity giant KKR KKR +0.09% KKR & Co. L.P. 

Many hedge-fund managers, particularly those that bet on global economic trends, have criticized stock prices they believe to be out of whack and a lack of trading volatility, which they say doesn’t suit their style. Stock prices have risen for five consecutive years, helped by low interest rates and central-bank stimulus programs.

Continue reading the rest of the story at WSJ.com

The post Hedge-Fund steps out of the Game due to HFT appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

BrokerDealer.com blog post courtesy of extract from FinAlternatives.com

Pershing Square Capital Management plans to move forward with a listed permanent capital vehicle later this year, the $15 billion hedge fund told investors.

The New York-based firm said it will raise an undisclosed amount in an initial public offering later this year. The money would serve to protect Pershing Square’s investments against redemptions.

“Because we are an active, control and influence-oriented investor, we have avoided being fully invested because of the risk of investor redemptions,” firm founder William Ackman wrote. “We will hopefully begin to address this issue with the initial public offering of Pershing Square Holdings Ltd., targeted for later this year, which will increase the amount of our capital that is permanent.”

Ackman said that Pershing Square itself would not go public.

Pershing Square has been mulling a permanent-capital IPO for about three years. Earlier this year, it said it would seek up to $3 billion in a London Stock Exchange listing of its offshore fund. In May 2013, he said he was only $500 million short of that figure.

If Pershing Square chooses to hold the IPO this year, it would take advantage of an exceptional run of performance. The firm’s flagship strategy is up 25% this year, in spite of big setbacks in one of its largest investments, a $1 billion short bet against nutritional supplements company Herbalife Inc.

The post Pershing Square Will List Permanent Capital Vehicle This Year appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

New U.S. banking regulations are putting the squeeze on prime brokerage units, and none are feeling it more than clients of brokerdealer Goldman Sachs.

The Wall Street giant has cut ties with some unprofitable clients and begun to impose new fees on others, as it seeks to cut its assets to increase its leverage ratio, which must rise from 4.5% to at least 5% by 2018. “It’s a total redefinition of what’s a good customer,” S3 Partners’ Robert Sloan told The Wall Street Journal.

In order to reduce its balance sheet, Goldman has asked clients to withdraw cash held in their prime-brokerage accounts. It is also charging more to finance trades and has added fees for untapped credit lines, according to the Journal.

Whereas Goldman and other prime brokerages have previously evaluated their business based on revenue, Goldman is now telling clients it is judging theirs on return on assets. The result has been that some hedge funds that produce little or no return for the bank have been asked to take their business elsewhere.

For the full coverage from Finalternatives.com, please click here.

The post BrokerDealers’ Prime Brokers Cutting Back on HF Clients:Goldman Sachs Squeeze appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

After six long years that must feel more like 60 for TPG Capital, the private-equity giant is nearly free of an investment that has made it money, but at a price.

TPG and Strauss Group are near a deal to list Strauss Coffee, the Israeli company in which TPG took a 25% stake in 2008. The deal will allow TPG to exit an investment that has produced more headaches and disappointment than solid returns.

When TPG and Strauss consummated their partnership, both had grand expansion plans and hopes to build a global coffee giant. But TPG’s purchased closed just days before Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the deal-making environment dried up, giving Strauss Coffee few takeover targets. In addition, the company struggled in regions like Russia and Eastern Europe.

For the full story, please visit www.finalternatives.com

The post Private Equity Firm Takes Coffee Break from Israel Company; IPO Provides Exit Strategy appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.

A Boston investment firm is nearing a deal to buy a stake in hedge-fund giant D.E. Shaw Group for more than $500 million from the estate of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter.

Affiliated Managers Group Inc. AMG +0.25% has bid for the 20% stake in a deal that would value D.E. Shaw at more than $2 billion. An agreement in principle has been reached but a final deal isn’t imminent and could still fall apart, according to people familiar with the matter.

D.E. Shaw, based in New York, manages about $32 billion and is known for its quantitative-trading strategies. Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that collapsed in 2008, paid between $750 million and $800 million for the stake in 2007, part of a wave of activity before the financial crisis by banks looking to buy their way into the hedge-fund business.

Investment groups have raised billions of dollars recently to buy minority stakes in hedge funds, prompting some in the industry to question whether the market is frothy.

The deals are a way for stakeholders to profit from hedge-funds’ management fees and performance, and buyers see more opportunity as banks have pulled back to adapt to stricter capital rules on managing capital and risk.

Hedge-fund clients don’t always like the deals, worried they are a way for managers to cash out. But managers and stake buyers say the sales are often structured to ensure that managers remain active, can help motivate employees if they creates a more attractive incentive structure and can increase the long-term odds a firm will endure beyond its founder’s involvement.

For the full story, please visit the Wall St. Journal article.

The post Boston Deal Firm Nears Pact to Buy Stake in Hedge Fund Titan appeared first on BrokerDealer Blog.