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12 Jun 2007

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Barbarian Launches Film Production Hedge Fund

"The current influx of funds from hedge funds, private equity funds and institutional investors into studio and independent distributor funds has created a considerable opportunity on the content creator side of the Hollywood equation," says Aaron Kaufman of the Barbarian Investment Fund.

Unlike recently formed film investment funds, Barbarian brings together 5 notable film producers such as Benderspink (The Ring, American Pie), Original Media (Half Nelson), GreeneStreet (In The Bedroom) and others. The fund provides a mitigated risk portfolio of non-correlated assets by investing only in films under 10 million that have 80 to 100% of their budgets secured by foreign pre-sales.

With 100,000. as minimum investment, a five year lock up period and 2% management fee, Barbarian partners with independent producers who specialize in independent films budgeted at less than 10 million.

Several nine-figure deals have recently been struck between large institutional investors such as JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and the Royal Bank of Scotland to name a few, and studios such as Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers that fund multi-year production slates costing more than $3 billion.

Private equity and hedge funds are now also entering the market, funding large scale ventures such as Virtual studios and Legendary Pictures, these groups have recently funded films such as Superman Returns, Batman Begins, Poseidon and 300.

Hedge Fund Search Engine Launched

A new vertical hedge fund search engine was launched yesterday by Institutional Investor, according to their statement, "The new beta version provides financial professionals with customized access to valuable hedge fund content."

The search engine is powered by Convera Corporation a provider of vertical search services for publishers. Residing on Institutional Investor’s Web site, as well as its own URL, the customized search engine allows professionals in the hedge fund industry to search deeply into highly relevant Web sites selected by hedge fund experts. The search engine is designed to return highly relevant results for traders and investors who need timely and targeted access to rankings, news and research.

“Institutional Investor has long been a trusted source of information for the financial community,” said Patrick Condo, Convera’s president and chief executive officer. “A vertical search engine focused on the complex and dynamic hedge fund industry will deliver important content for one of Institutional Investor’s key professional communities. The new search engine is a natural extension of Institutional Investor’s current product range and provides an extremely useful tool for anyone working in or dealing with the hedge fund industry.”

Institutional Investor publishes market products in the hedge fund sector including Alpha magazine, Hedge Fund Daily and Alternative Investment News and organizes conferences and events for the hedge fund community.