Diggle, however, plans to remain in the industry by turning his family office into a fund manager. He told Reuters he would set up two new funds and take over two of Artradis’s existing funds.
Croatian musician Marko Perković aka Thompson was one of the recipients of the HDZ party “black funds”.
According to reports, Perković was given EUR 500,000 and asked to, in return, refuse to perform in favor of any party during the 2007 election campaign in Croatia.
The use of EU funds in the pre-accession period will enable the Serbian farmers to increase their competitiveness. They will also improve production and boost earnings, Serbian Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management Saša Dragin stated on Tuesday.
Ministry of Labor adviser Ljubomir Pejaković announced that RSD 850mn will be provided for the poor in Serbia in 2011. The money – amounting to some EUR EUR 8mn – will be a form of emergency welfare, which will be the largest sum ever pent for this purpose.
Deputy PM Božidar Äelić saysSerbia is moving quickly towards the EU, and that it should get candidate country status next spring. He also added that local governments were not using the Instrument of Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) funds well enough.
Sovereign wealth funds from China, Singapore and South Korea and two private-equity firms agreed to invest US$900 million ($1.2 billion) in Chesapeake Energy Corp., the third-largest natural-gas producer in the US.
The investors bought the Oklahoma City-based gas company’s 5.75% convertible preferred stock on June 18, Chesapeake said yesterday in a statement, without giving details of the individual stakes. South Korea’s $30 billion sovereign wealth fund said yesterday it will spend US$200 million.
Private banks are recommending that clients allocate more money to hedge funds, in particular event-driven funds that will benefit from an expected surge in mergers and acquisitions and debt restructuring.
Unlike in 2009 when stocks rallied across the board, the overall market direction is less certain this year and the best returns will likely come from event-driven managers who can better navigate the twists and turns in M&As compared with traditional long-only and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
Sovereign wealth funds picked up their pace of spending in the second half of 2009 after an extended period of retrenchment during the global financial crisis, a recent study said.
The last two quarters of 2009 accounted for 85% of what the funds publicly invested during the year, the study said.
There will be no more “black funds†for political parties in Serbia by the end of the year, says State Secretary with the Justice Ministry Slobodan Homen. He explained that this will be possible since a law on funding of political parties will be drafted by June.
Singapore has become a hotspot for hedge funds and other alternative asset managers in recent years due to tax incentives and strict secrecy rules. Hedge funds in Singapore manage about US$35 billion ($48 billion) in assets, according to AIMA.
Darco Water Technologies appointed Adept Public Acccounting Corporation of Singapore to investigate on the past three years’ accounting records of its Taiwanese unit, Darco Engineering Taiwan (DET), on possible misappropriation of funds. The company has been concerned with several extraordinary and large administrative cash advances, unsatisfactory explanation of items in DET’s accounting records last year.
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Singapore’s central bank proposed tighter rules for hedge funds managing assets below $250 million, requiring them to have a minimum capital and two representatives residing in the city state.
Regulators around the world are tightening rules that will increase scrutiny of hedge funds and heighten oversight of derivatives in the wake of the global financial crisis.
President Boris Tadić says possible abuse of the funds Belgrade sets aside for Kosovo and Metohija will be investigated. All perpetrators will be punished if abuse is uncovered, he told reporters in Medveđa, southern Serbia, on Thursday.
“Particularly in China, there is a huge amount of opportunity. There is no shortage in the pipeline (and) we can still buy malls at good valuations,” Pua, who is Perennial’s CEO, told Reuters in an interview, adding he did not see the risk of a property bubble in retail properties.
UK insurer Prudential is tapping sovereign wealth funds in China and Singapore to help finance its US$35.5 billion ($49.9 billion) buyout of US insurance giant AIG’s Asian arm, an FT report said today, according to Dow Jones Newsires.
The Financial Times quoted unidentified sources as saying that Prudential and its advisers were in talks with the sovereign wealth funds to support a planned US$20 billion share offer for AIA.
It said the Singapore and China sovereign wealth funds had not made a final decision but their response was positive.
