Hedge Fund Returns Up, Redemptions Down

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

BOSTON (Reuters)—Hedge funds are living up to their high-flying reputation again with strong returns in the last three months, but many investors burned by last year's losses are clamoring for reforms before committing new money.

Final June quarter data will not be released until next week, but Merrill Lynch analysts who track returns in the $1.3 trillion industry wrote on Monday [June 29] that hedge funds will likely post their best quarterly performance since early 2000.

The rebound became visible in April when the average hedge fund returned 2.7%. It gained strength in May with a 4.4% rise, Merrill Lynch analysts wrote. For the second quarter, they estimate a gain of 6% or more.

That would mark a dramatic recovery from 2008 when the average hedge fund lost 19% and some celebrated funds, including Citadel Investment Group LLC, run by Kenneth Griffin, the 41-year-old Chicago billionaire, were down as much as 50% at the height of the financial crisis.

This year's stock rally, sparked by hopes that the worst of the global economic downturn is over, has helped boost many funds' returns.

Tudor BVI Global Fund, run by Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp., gained 12.4% through the end of May, while Lee Ainslie's Maverick Fund gained 8.8% through the end of May, their investors said.

"I believe there's been a very big change of mood and it has come at least three months earlier than I was expecting," said Christopher Fawcett, chief executive of hedge fund firm Fauchier Partners in London.

Last year, pension funds, endowments and wealthy individuals reacted to hedge funds' heavy losses and high fees by demanding a record $152 billion back in the last three months of 2008, research firm Hedge Fund Research said. This year, the pace of redemptions has slowed. In the first quarter, investors pulled $103 billion, according to HFR.

In May, hedge funds saw inflows of $3.4 billion, their first inflows since May last year, researchers at TrimTabs found.

"Redemptions have really dried up," said Mark Kary, chief executive of hedge fund firm Polar Capital in London, noting that his firm also saw small net inflows in the second quarter.

While inflows are still small, industry researchers said they played a critical role by letting hedge funds stop selling market positions to raise cash needed to let investors out.

"The inflows kept hedge funds from being a drain on the markets," TrimTabs President Conrad Gann said.

Pension funds and other investors have said they plan to commit more money to hedge funds in the second half of 2009, but they are also ready to attach conditions about how their money will be invested and a right to get it back fast.

"Transparency, liquidity, good fee terms, no gates, no side pockets. That is what the institutional community will be pressing hedge funds for," said Eric Goodbar, hedge fund strategist at Mellon Capital Management, a unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. "Hedge funds that are essentially large lockup structures will be viewed with caution."

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Laurence Fletcher

The LTV, IRR, DSCR And ROI: Ensuring Accurate Numbers

The majority of real estate investment and development decisions are numbers driven, but it
is important to realize that not all parties are concerned with the same numbers. Therefore, each party in a given real estate transaction would benefit from a greater understanding of the matrices that are important to the others involved.

For example, when an investor is talking to a lender about a transaction, it may not make sense to discuss internal rate of return (IRR) or equity multiples, but it would be very important to bring up the maximum allowable loan-to-value (LTV) ratio. Or, when a developer is trying to raise equity, the investors may not care much about debt service coverage ratios (DSCRs), but they may be very concerned with the cash-on-cash return, for example.

Consequently, it is important to understand each of these matrices and how they are derived. For many of the more complex calculations, participants may find it easier to use Excel or some other spreadsheet software to calculate these numbers. Please refer to the corresponding figures to learn how to input these formulas into the spreadsheets or otherwise perform the calculations. Equity for real estate investments can come from a number of different sources.

Many small investors and developers raise equity from friends and family or from high-net-worth individuals that they may know. Larger real estate companies may have their own dedicated capital, or they may be partnered with opportunity funds or other institutional investors. Regardless of the source, calculating the performance of each invest-ment is essential, and the three most common matrices used are IRR, cash-on-cash return and equity multiple. Using these matrices enables investors to evaluate the expected performance of each investment and compare it to other possible investments.

The IRR is usually the first number that most institutional equity groups ask for when they are presented with a new real estate investment. For a given investment, the IRR is the discount
rate that makes the net present value of all cashflows equal to zero. When calculating an IRR, you must remember to discount negative cashflows in future years back to time zero at a safe rate. Doing so is necessary because the calculation built into the IRR function in most software will assume that these cashflows are discounted at the IRR. Obviously, this assumption causes investors to set aside insufficient cash to fund these future shortfalls.

It is possible to use the modified modified IRR (MIRR) function on many spreadsheets, but then you must also decide upon a reinvestment rate for future positive cashflows. At the
current time, most institutional real estate investors are still using IRR over MIRR and are typically interested in both un-levered and levered IRRs. The un-levered IRR for a project is
calculated using the cashflows before debt service. Although most investors prefer to use some level of leverage when purchasing properties, the un- levered IRR is still very useful.

Remember that when you leverage an investment, you are adding additional risk. Therefore, an un-levered IRR is closer to a risk-adjusted return than a levered IRR. The levered IRR is calculated using cashflows after loan proceeds and debt service. This figure is usually the number that investors are most concerned with, as it is a good indication of the actual return that they will receive on their investment. Each institution’s criteria for investing are different: Core investors may be happy with levered IRRs in the mid-teens, while value-add and opportunistic investors often look for mid-high twenties or better.

While the IRR displays an investment’s performance over the investment’s entire holding period, many investors are interested in that performance at a given point in time. This performance can be measured as a return on investment (ROI) or cash- on-cash return.

The ROI for a given investment can be measured by subtracting the cost of the investment from the gain from the investment and then dividing the difference by the cost of the investment.

The cash-on-cash return is calculated in a similar way, but it uses cashflows after loan proceeds and debt service. The cash-on-cash return is important to investors who are seeking
current income. Equity investors also want to know how many dollars they are going to receive over the entire holding period for each dollar that they invest. This is often referred to as the equity multiple or holding period return. It is typical for investors to get a minimum
of two times their initial investment back out over time.

From a recent article in:

Commercial Mortgage Insight
August 2008 issue
By Joseph R. CaCCiapaglia