DnB NOR Global Energy Hedge Fund Launch

Stockholm based hedge fund manager, Carlson Fund, has launched a Global Energy fund. The fund invests in traditional energy companies globally, emerging markets included. Prime investment targets are oil and gas companies as well as in the service industry.

Lill Evanger Aafos and Aliya Orazalina will be managing the fund. They have 28 years of combined investment experience.

Ms. Aafos came to DnB NOR in 2008 to head up the global energy team. Previously, she was responsible for all energy investments at Norway’s state pension fund.

The new fund was launched on April 29. Carlson is part of the DnB NOR Asset Management group, which has a long history of managing energy stocks as part of client mandates and global portfolios.

The case for energy
To sustain global growth, the world has a need for energy that goes beyond the sources currently available.
Consumption in emerging markets has a long way to go to catch up with that of the West: The average Chinese citizen will have to quadruple his energy consumption to reach the consumption level of Americans. Indians must increase consumption more than tenfold.

Discovery of new oil does not keep up with increases in consumption, and new finds are in places where extraction is difficult. This leads to higher prices on oil and increased activity in the oil sector.

Recent set-backs for the nuclear energy sector will make the world more dependent on other sources of energy. Germany decided this week to decommission all nuclear reactors by 2022. Alternative energies are part of the mix, but traditional sources will still make up the lion’s share of energy supply over the foreseeable future.

Hedge Fund Industry Awards

HedgeCo News - Sadis and Goldberg was named the best law firm in the United States at the Hedgeweek USA Awards. The awards were for excellence among hedge fund managers and service providers for the U.S. industry's best performers and their ability to demonstrate consistency and depth of expertise against the backdrop of a more complex investment climate.

The awards were decided by the votes of Hedgeweek's 20,000 U.S. based subscribers, which include institutional and high net worth investors, fund administrators, prime brokers, custodians, advisers and other industry professionals. Ron S. Geffner, Partner and Head of the Financial Services Group, stated that, "the Hedgeweek USA Law Awards rank amongst the top global awards and we are honored to be recognized by our industry in this category."

Sadis & Goldberg is one of New York's leading law firms, providing legal counsel to several hundred advisers, broker-dealers and commodity pool operators that sponsor, manage and advise hedge funds, private equity funds, venture capital funds and separately managed accounts.

Preet Bharara on the Galleon Hedge Fund Trial

The June 27, 2011, issue of The New Yorker, on page 42, “A Dirty Business”, George Packer, writes about the biggest insider-trading case in history, and has an exclusive interview with Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office pursued the investigation.

When Bharara took office, in 2009, he made it clear that he would go after Wall Street greed, and the Galleon case helps to illustrate the broader culture of the financial world, in which, “over the past decade, cheating and self-dealing became a principal way to succeed,” Packer writes.

But some Wall Street observers have called the Galleon case—which included thousands of taped phone calls by the government and more than two hundred and thirty subpoenas for phone numbers by the S.E.C.—a sideshow.

The case centers around Raj Rajaratnam, the head of Galleon, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund, and Anil Kumar, a former senior executive with the consulting firm McKinsey, who, in 2003, secretly agreed to be an outside consultant to Rajaratnam. In seducing Kumar, Packer writes, Rajaratnam “made a valuable addition to the network that he had built up over the years.”

Initially, Kumar believed that he’d be passing information to Rajaratnam legally, but it wasn’t long before he realized that Rajaratnam wanted tips that he could convert into profitable stock trades, and Kumar began breaking both McKinsey’s confidentiality rules and the securities laws that forbid such exchanges. When Kumar was arrested and subsequently handcuffed, Packer writes, “He fainted, hitting his head against a wall. He had to be treated at a local hospital before he could be brought in for booking.” Later that day, Rajaratnam’s wife sent a text message to Kumar’s wife, which read, “I’m sorry.”
Read the full review on HedgeCo.