Despite the international outcry following the death of one of its lawyers in prison, Russia is continuing its investigation of Hermitage Capital Management, taking its probe onto the London-based hedge fund’s home turf.

read more

Threadneedle Asset Management is readying a UCITS III-compliant version of its U.K. long/short equity hedge fund.

read more

A United Nations report says that the most effective way to protect fisheries and coral reefs is to establish networks of small marine protected areas around the globe, rather than large reserves where fishing bans are often ignored. The U.N. University’s Institute for Water, Environment, and Health says that groupings of small protected areas, with fishing allowed in between, are the best way to preserve coral reefs, mangrove swamps, and fish stocks without alienating local fishermen and residents. “People have been creating marine protected areas for decades,” said Peter Sale, a leader of the study. “Most of them are totally ineffective." He cited Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as a good example of management, with a network of reserves closed to commercial activity while other zones are open to tourism and fishing. Protecting vital reefs and mangrove swamps, which serve as nurseries for juvenile fish, can help rebuild fish populations, which then repopulate nearby areas of the ocean. Those areas can be opened to fishing, which alleviates pressure on the more crucial protected zones, Sale said.

Frontier Capital Management has hired a new portfolio manager and senior analyst and promoted a partner to head its intermediary business.

read more

Private bank Sal. Oppenheim has sold its French fund of hedge funds business to Olympia Capital Management.

read more

The pollination of plants and flowers by bees appears to be declining, a phenomenon that is likely linked to a drop in overall bee numbers as well as a mismatch in bee hibernation and plant flowering that seems to be linked to climate change, according to a new study. James Thomson, a University of Toronto evolutionary biologist who has studied bees and pollination in the Rocky Mountains for more than 20 years, reported a progressive decline in pollination over the years. He attributes it, in part, to declining bee populations possibly caused by colony collapse disorder. But the most important factor appears to be a “climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation,” Thomson said. His studies of pollination rates at a test plot in the Colorado Rockies show that the fruiting rates of plants and flowers are especially low early in the season, when flowers are opening but bees are still hibernating. “This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change,” said Thomson, whose study appeared in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

The former heads of Polygon Investment Partners’ largest hedge fund have struck out on their own, raising US$100 million for their new fund despite the troubles of their old.

The European Special Situations and Distressed Credit Fund will invest with the expectation that an economic slowdown will make refinancing distressed debt difficult.

read more

A pair of investors was awarded nearly $13 million by arbitrators in their case against Bernard Madoff feeder fund mogul J. Ezra Merkin.

read more

Tara Bryson and her boyfriend, Michael Hearl, were arrested in July and charged with running “a complex marijuana cultivation operation capable of producing a marijuana crap year round.

read more

The Brilla Group, which focuses exclusively on investing in high-end beachfront hotels and resorts, recently launched its first private equity fund.

read more

The amount of carbon stored in the world’s tropical forests varies widely according to underlying geology and other factors, and current estimates of forest carbon reserves may be too high, according to a new study. A research team from the Carnegie Institution for Science used satellite mapping, laser probing of forest undergrowth from aircraft, and local ground surveys to estimate how much carbon was stored in the 17,000-square-mile lowland forest in the Madre de Dios region of Peru. The team’s surveys showed that the forest stored roughly 395 million tons of carbon — far less than the 587-million-ton estimate of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The researchers, reporting in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that the earlier estimate was off because different tropical forests store varying amounts of carbon, and that forests where the underlying rocks are younger contain more carbon in soils and trees. In another study, researchers said that the number of insect species in tropical forests also varies widely according to topography, and that montane tropical forests in the Ecuadorean Andes and highlands of Costa Rica contained six times more insect species than predicted.

Hedge fund Charlemagne Capital reported lower first-half earnings on lower assets under management, but said that investors have begun to return to the firm over the past two months.

read more

Patricia Cohen, the ex-wife of SAC Capital Advisors founder Steven Cohen, is in the midst of her second bad break-up with a lawyer.

read more

Stenham Asset Management is buying one of the oldest fund of hedge funds shops in Europe in a move that will increase its own assets under management by more than 10%.

read more

An activist caravan to bring one of Jimmy Carter’s solar panels back to the White House symbolizes the time that the U.S. has lost in developing new energy technologies – and the urgent need for taking action on climate. BY BILL MCKIBBEN

London-based City Financial has launched an Asian fund of hedge funds, hiring Clontarf Capital to manage the new portfolio.

read more

A deal on strict new hedge fund and private equity rules for the European Union is just weeks away, according to the bloc’s internal markets commissioner.

read more

Goldman Sachs’ proprietary trading business—the cradle of many of the world’s most successful hedge fund managers—will close to comply with new U.S. financial regulations, but not before spawning another hedge fund or two.

Some members of Goldman's Asia prop. team are likely to join a hedge fund founded by Morgan Sze, head of that group, while the New York-based traders are in talks to join an asset management firm.

read more

Hedge funds inched up in August, avoiding the steep decline suffered by the broader markets last month.

read more

The Michigan State Retirement Systems is tripling its hedge fund allocation—at the expense of its private equity investments.

read more