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24 May 2007

Incremax Wins Microsoft Hedge Fund Competency Award

Incremax was awarded with Microsoft's Third Quarter New York/New Jersey Area Partner Award for Competency in understanding the scalable infrastructure, information productivity and custom business applications that drive both Fixed-Income and Equity hedge fund management firms.

"Most Managing Directors are not aware of the complexity of the technology required to manage Front/Middle/Back-Office operations efficiently while mitigating risk and instilling investor confidence in their ability to trade and protect assets," said Kerry Gerontinanos, President of Incremax. "It was important to us as a provider of Microsoft-based solutions that we addressed the scalable needs of a 3-man operation managing tens of million dollars of assets to the management firms that catapult quickly to billions of dollars in assets under trade."

Leveraging expertise gained from large-scale technology deployments in Financial Capital Markets for clients such as Citigroup and Fidelity Investments, Incremax was able to create a technology roadmap of Microsoft products and business applications specifically targeted to handle the needs of hedge fund management firms as they grow from millions, to billions of dollars in assets under management.

Hedge Fund Office Opening In Zunich

Hedge fund service provider Cantor Fitzgerald today announced the opening of a new office in Zurich, Switzerland, further expanding its global footprint within the world's financial markets.

The new office is based in the heart of Zurich's financial district at Bahnhofsstrasse 64 and opens specifically to meet the demands of new and existing clients the global cash equity and derivatives markets in Zurich and the rest of central Europe, including hedge funds, asset managers and pension funds.

Gilbert Fischer and Oliver Dufek will jointly head up the office and be responsible for spearheading the expansion of the group's European institutional equity business. Fischer, previously at Dresdner Kleinwort, hedge fund Cazenove and UBS will initially lead a team of 12 with Oliver Dufek, previously at Dresdner Kleinwort and Cantor
Fitzgerald in London. They will report to Didier Bensadoun, Global Head of Equity Derivatives and Elon Spar, Chief Executive for Europe and Asia.

Cantor Fitzgerald sees Zurich as an important center from which to serve its clients locally and will look to further expand its existing product lines. With the addition of Zurich to its global network, Cantor Fitzgerald now has 28 offices around the world.

Commenting on the launch, Gilbert Fischer said, "We are delighted to be opening a new office in the heart of Zurich, a key location for us in serving our clients. This new office will enable us to offer a local service that will benefit both our clients and our business."

Dufek added: "Our local presence and knowledge of the markets will enhance our existing offering, including alpha generating ideas, portfolio analytics and optimization, to existing and potential clients. We look forward to working with them across the region."

Elon Spar, Chief Executive of Cantor Fitzgerald for Europe and Asia said, "The opening of our Zurich office represents a growing demand from new and existing clients for our services and is key to

HFR Launches Hedge Fund Report In Arabic

Chicago-based HFR Group L.L.C. today announced in a press release the publication in Arabic for the first time of its benchmark Quarterly industry report on the performance and size of the global hedge fund industry. HFR has long had a strong base of subscriber to the report in the Middle Eastern region but to date, the report has only been available in an English language version.

Publication of the classic industry report in Arabic reflects the surge in interest amongst Middle Eastern investors in hedge fund strategies and investment opportunities. The amount of potential Middle Eastern capital, both private wealth and institutional funds, available for investing has been estimated at $4.1 Trillion, making the Arab world one of the most valuable sources of investment capital available in the world today. Hedge funds themselves have also enjoyed notable success in the Middle East region with the HFR Emerging Markets Index (which covers the Middle East, Asia and Latin America) rising by 19.5% in 2006 and an average of 16.4% since the index was first constituted in 1990.

Ken Heinz, President of HFR, said: "The Middle East is an incredibly interesting and fertile region of the world for the hedge fund investing, both as a source of potential capital and a focus of investment for emerging market strategy managers. The Emerging Market strategy has been one of the strongest performing over recent years and continues to deliver above average returns coupled with modest volatility. Providing our industry report in Arabic is a natural next step for HFR and underpins the importance of this region to the global hedge fund community."

The hedge fund industry saw record inflows of more than $60 billion during the first quarter of 2007, bringing total assets under management to $1.568 trillion, according to data released today by Hedge Fund Research (HFR), the leading source of hedge fund information and performance data. These new inflows represented an almost 300 percent gain over 4Q 2006, when the industry recorded $15.7 billion in new fund flows, and was equal to nearly half the record $126 billion in new assets gathered by hedge funds in all of last year.

HFR data is based on the more than 11,000 funds tracked historically by the firm which includes the over 6,500 funds reporting to the company as part of the HFR Database subscription product.

Chicago-based HFR Group L.L.C., founded in 1993, is a global leader in hedge fund data, research, indexation and asset management.

The Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index Up +2.04% in April

The Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index, one of the world's largest hedge fund databases, returned +2.04% in April, and +4.81% year-to-date. "Hedge funds continue to deliver solid returns, but with significantly less risk than equities," notes Ben Rossman, General Manager. "Over the last five year period, for example, hedge funds' annualized volatility measured about 4.5%, which is roughly a third of the 12%-13% volatility experienced by equities."

By comparison, the S&P 500, MSCI World Equity, FTSE 100, and Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond indices were up by +4.43% (+5.09% YTD), +4.21% (+6.36% YTD), +2.24% (+3.68% YTD), and +0.54% (+2.05% YTD), respectively.

17 of 18 Greenwich strategies ended April in positive territory. Futures strategies led, up +4.42%, owing largely to managers' ability to capitalize on strength in energy and Euro and Sterling valuations. Short sellers, which account for roughly 1% of index constituents, were the exception; down -2.91% for the month.

Currently, the April Index includes 972 funds. Final results will be posted by Greenwich at the end of May, after additional funds have submitted returns.

In April, the Greenwich Investable Index returned 1.49% (4.03% YTD). It adds investability, active management and liquidity to the diversification and performance benefits of the broad Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index. It references actual hedge fund vehicles as opposed to separately managed accounts that attempt to replicate the returns of actual hedge fund vehicles. Since inception in January 2003, the Investable Index has achieved an annualized return of +10.83% versus +11.93% for the Greenwich Global Hedge Fund Index.

Simran Receives Hedge Fund Award

Simran Capital Management, a pre-event driven activist hedge fund manager that focuses on stressed and distressed credit markets, was given the "Emerging Manager of the Year" award at Opal Financial Group's 2007 Emerging Manager Summit.

This event brought together a diverse group of up-and-coming performance-oriented managers, fund of hedge funds, pension funds, endowments, family offices and leaders from the hedge fund industry, drawing its largest participation in its four-year history.

"We are very pleased to recognize and reward Simran Capital Management for their outstanding performance," said Abe Wellington, president, Opal Financial Group. "The purpose of this award, and this conference, is to showcase emerging managers with strong results and high potential; Simran Capital clearly has both."

"To achieve this level of recognition from our peers within the first year of launching this strategy is very gratifying," said Mesh Tandon, president and managing partner of hedge fund Simran Capital Management. "We thank Opal and Focus Point Press for this award and we're confident that our investment approach will stand the test of time through changing market conditions and continue to exemplify the spirit of this award."

The judging panel for the Emerging Manager of the Year Award was comprised of industry specialists from Focus Point Press, Opal Financial Group, as well as leading institutional and private investors. Judging decisions were based on performance, qualitative and structural criteria.

Launched in 2006, Simran Capital Management is a pre-event driven activist hedge fund that focuses on stressed and distressed credit markets and uses a proprietary method to find value and minimize risk in the universe of high- yield and distressed bonds.