Albourne is not a hedge fund, but it helps pension plans, university foundations and charities and the like allocate money to them. We are hugely proud of this work because we are utterly convinced that hedge funds are good for our clients; good for the markets and good for the average man, and woman, in the street.

For all our sakes, discussion of the role and impact of hedge funds has to be disentangled from the populist politics of envy. For the record, although it should be completely irrelevant: I have never voted Conservative; I was the first in my family to stay in school after 15 and I am hugely proud of my family’s union roots; I am writing this from our offices, which are juxtaposed between a gas-works and a home for lost dogs. I feel compelled to “stand up and be counted” at this time exactly because it will be the vulnerable in society who end up bearing the brunt of the current meltdown in commonsense, if it continues on its current path.

The global credit binge was neither created, nor fuelled, by hedge funds. They are now being vilified for having played a role in bringing this madness to an end. Those investment banks running with 29 times leverage, or building societies lending out radically more money then they had received in deposits, were all fully regulated entities. Did the regulators blow the whistle: or the management or shareholders of those banks; or the journalists; or the politicians? Left unabated, just how much deeper into trouble could this inadvertent conspiracy of ignorance and negligence have got us? There needs to be quite a dark word beyond irony to describe why the FSA has initiated multiple enquiries about short-selling without having initiated a single enquiry directed at the officers of the firms that have actually failed. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury now seems happy to pontificate on short-selling, as if it were an ecumenical issue. Presumably he is also against wasps, rain, MMR jabs and a whole host of other things that appear very irritating to those who have absolutely no concept of how equilibrium within complex systems has to work.

For the avoidance of doubt, not a single dollar of tax payer’s money has ever been, nor ever will be, needed to bail out a hedge fund. Indeed, there is already a pool of $700bn waiting to rescue the world’s financial markets: it is called the hedge fund industry. Quite simply, it works because of an alignment of interests. Hedge fund managers put their own money, alongside that of their clients’, exactly where their mouth is. Of course, there will always be some who just find the rich intrinsically unattractive. They should vote for higher taxation. Many may then take that wealth, their taxes, their donations and the business that their consumption creates somewhere else, but at least London’s loss would be some other city’s gain. What would convert a crisis into a tragedy would be to regress to a state-managed economy where rules will always be “gamed” and where corruption fills the vacuum left by honest aligned god-fearing endeavour.

Hedge funds are not the problem. They are the solution.

Reprinted with permission. 

Requirements:
2+ years exposure to hedge funds / trading firms / investment banks.  B.S., M.S. or Ph.D. in a hard science.  2+ years of Linux experience.  2+ years of scripting using Perl, Python and SQL.  A process-oriented mindset.

Responsibilities:
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Over a dozen topics comprise the Report, such as:

• “Complete List: Most Influential Headhunters”
• “How to Let the Headhunter Do the Job”
• “Video: Acing the Headhunter Interview”

The hundred individuals who make the cut are all profiled, with contact information and brief statements of philosophy and advice.

The article, “How To Manage Your Executive Résumé,” may be of special interest right now.  Related advice, specific to advancing in the hedge fund industry, can be found in the interviews with hedge fund recruiters on this site.  And cross-referencing Business Week’s top 100 list with our index of hedge fund recruiters will create an excellent industry employment resource.

The Role:
Actively managing a trading book in inflation derivatives.  Correctly and rapidly establish the pricing of client orders.  Participating in the technical development of the desk.  Monitoring the derivatives markets and new products linked to the inflation indices in several currencies (EUR, GBP and domestic indices as in Italy, Spain, &c). Dynamically managing positions and strategies by means of swaps, caps and floors and inflation swaptions. Providing assistance to the sales team and group entities with proposals for inflation structures and competitive pricing.  Contributing to the development of new activities and the optimization of existing activities, associated systems and processes.

The ideal candidate will:
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In mid-September, he spoke at the Global Alpha Forum in Greenwich, CT, firmly stating that, at that time, there was no consideration whatsoever of providing a government bailout to LCTM. He says, “We did have a sense that there was a tremendous coordination problem, and if everyone found a way to stand down and not rip all the assets out of LTCM, more or less everybody would be better off.”

Regarding the current crisis, Summers urges “humility” and notes: “Until March 2008, there had been no contingency plan for the unwinding of a major broker-dealer.”

Astra Investimentos (Sao Paulo, Brazil) has launched the Astra Credit Fund.
The Vallea Fund is a joint venture of Laven Partners (UK) and Vallea Capital.
The Venus Index Plus Fund is from Venus Capital Management.
FrontPoint Partners will soon launch a new tech fund.
Rosemount Capital Management (Dublin, Ireland) has launched a new fund.
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More seriously, data that is already almost two months old also shows severly inadequate performance, and things haven’t gotten easier since then.  Funds are not meeting their high water marks, the valuation threshold that allows a fund to collect the performance fees (20% of gains or thereabouts) that constitute its profit.  Only one in ten hedge funds is now earning performance fees.  One fund executive doubts that some funds — assuming they survive so long — will begin again to earn them before 2010.

Though investors have been pulling money from hedge funds for many months, funds that retain credibility with investors may ride it through.  But since bonuses are often determined from performance fee earnings, hedge fund compensation is looking to be very tight this year, in any case.

To read the article from Deal Journal, click here.  For more on high water marks, read this lucid post.

A prop trading firm in Chicago is looking for a Quality Assurance Engineer to join their team.  Requirements:

• 4+ years QA experience:  system, integration, functional, and regression testing of complex client/server applications
• 2+ years using Windows-based automated testing tools such as QuickTest Professional, WinRunner, QA Run, Rational Robot.  Expert-level QTP skills are especially important
• Excellent communications skills - a problem solver & troubleshooter - works well independently and with a group
• Standard QA skills: ability to understand / analyze requirements and gather information, create testplans / testcases, understanding of testing role in typical software development methodologies, setup / maintain software testing environments, ability to estimate completion time for tasks and communicate status to management, document / report defects and follow-through to resolution, risk analysis and test activity prioritization skills, etc.
• B.S. in computer science preferred
• Working knowledge of SQL

The firm values experience testing a variety of software products, system architectures, platforms, etc.

Trading industry experience would be a huge plus.

• The total let go from Merrill Lynch may be around 24,000
• “The resume flow will start on Monday like there’s no tomorrow,” according to one recruiter cited
• It’s looking like 2008 job cuts in the financial sector may surpass the 2007 total
• “‘Hedge funds, money managers and family offices’ should benefit from the job losses at Lehman and Merrill”
• “The Middle East and Russia [are] regions hungry for U.S. financial professionals”

Identifying hedge fund recruiters with strong international presence may be an especially good move now, for those willing to relocate.

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For complete info including contact, click here.