HTML clipboardTwo Senior Partners Leave Cerberus – Wall Street Journal
Two senior partners in Europe at Cerberus Capital Management, the U.S. buyout firm that owns Chrysler, have left the company.
Ken Leet, a former strategic adviser to Ford Motor Co., has left, 2½ years after the private-equity firm hired him to strengthen its European business, according to a person familiar with the company. Jeff Lubin, who joined in 2005 to establish the European arm, also has left.
The departures came as the company cut a third of its staff in the U.K. in the first three months of the year, according to financial accounts filed at Companies House in May. The documents said that head count at Cerberus UK Management Ltd. fell to 15 from 23…..
Fidelity teams up with KKR in listings deal – Financial Times
Mutual fund group Fidelity is teaming up with Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, the private equity firm, in an unusual deal that will give Fidelity’s huge retail client base access to future public listings of KKR-owned and underwritten companies.
The exclusive arrangement will give KKR guaranteed retail distribution for its initial public offerings, and will allow Fidelity to offer its brokerage customers an equity investment they might not find elsewhere…..
Pierre Lagrange: Hedge fund to build retail offering – Financial Times
…..The annual accounts detail a 39 per cent decline in assets under management in 2008, and a 25 per cent loss across the hedge funds (29 per cent across all funds). The company narrowly avoided breaching terms sets on its loans through the purchase in December of Société Générale Asset Management’s UK arm and the immediate award of a mandate to manage $3bn (£1.9bn €2.1bn) of SGAM’s $8.5bn of assets, which kept its total above the required minimum.
London-based GLG has since renegotiated its credit agreement to eliminate the loan covenants, paying down debt through the issue of convertible bonds as part of the deal. Pierre Lagrange, one of the three founders and senior managing director, says: “We felt we wanted to improve the balance sheet going into the next period, which is why we bought a lot of debt back, putting equity into the business in the form of convertible bonds.”
The group is now looking forward to being in the vanguard of the convergence movement between alternative and traditional investment management strategies. It has a stable of long-only funds inherited from SGAM, re-labelled GLG, and plans to launch some of its offshore fund strategies as Ucits III funds to the UK retail market…..
Where big bankrupts are old hat – Financial Times
Large, high-profile bankruptcies are old hat for the lower Manhattan court in New York.
When federal bankruptcy judge Robert Gerber passed a controversial loan to Lyondell Chemical, the bankrupt chemical company, this year, he insisted that parts of the brief schedule for the company to reorganise itself be altered to account for an anticipated deluge in cases, particularly large, complex ones that could jam up the court.
A week ago, Judge Gerber was assigned to one of largest and most complex bankruptcy cases – that of General Motors….
Tags: Bankruptcy, Cerberus, Fidelity, GLG, Hedge funds, KKR, Private equity
