McDonald's, Wendy's, and Hedge Funds: Hamburger Hedging?

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
David P. Stowell ◽  
Tim Moore ◽  
Jeff Schumacher
Keyword(s):  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Shareholder Value ◽  
Hedge Fund ◽  
Corporate Management ◽  
Share Prices ◽  
Corporate Managers ◽  
Changing Roles ◽  
Time Warner ◽  
View Management

Are hedge funds heroes or villains? Management of Blockbuster, Time Warner, Six Flags, Knight-Ridder, and Bally Total Fitness might prefer the “villain” appellation, but Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and HealthSouth shareholders might view management as the real villains and hedge funds as vehicles to oust incompetent corporate managers before they run companies into the ground or steal them through fraudulent transactions. Could the pressure exerted by activist hedge funds on targeted companies result in increased share prices, management accountability, and better communication with shareholders? Or does it distract management from its primary goal of enhancing long-term shareholder value?To determine the benefits and disadvantages of activist hedge fund activity from the perspective of corporate management and shareholders; to examine if a hedge fund's suggested corporate restructuring could create greater shareholder value; and to explain the changing roles and perspectives of hedge funds.

Style Analysis and Consistency

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. McCumber ◽  
Jyotsaana Parajuli
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factor ◽  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Hedge Fund ◽  
Style Analysis ◽  
Financial Instruments ◽  
Positive Return ◽  
Primary Strategy

This chapter explores the degree to which hedge funds’ performance is attributable to a self-declared style that broadly describes managers’ primary investment focus. Hedge funds’ self-declared styles and strategies are meant to be descriptive and to attract investor capital seeking exposure to that strategy and opportunity. Hedge fund strategies have evolved as managers uncover and exploit new opportunities. In practice, even when a majority of investor capital is dedicated to a primary strategy, managers complement a primary strategy with other positions in an attempt to earn positive returns. The freedom with which managers can operate regarding regulation and the breadth of financial instruments available make long-term and clear categorization of hedge fund styles difficult. Although research shows that many funds consistently deliver superior returns in a given style, many also deliver alpha, a positive return that is not attributable to any style or risk factor.

Beta Active Hedge Fund Management

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 2525-2558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Duanmu ◽  
Alexey Malakhov ◽  
William R. McCumber
Keyword(s):  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Common Factor ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Hedge Fund ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Time Varying ◽  
Fund Managers ◽  
Out Of Sample ◽  
Hedge Fund Performance

We reconsider whether hedge funds’ time-varying risk factor exposures are predictive of superior performance. We construct an overall measure (BA) of fund managers and present evidence that top beta active managers deliver superior long-term out-of-sample performance compared to top alpha active managers. BA captures the time-varying nature of beta exposures and can be interpreted as a common factor of both systematic risk (SR) and (1 - R2) measures. BA also compares favorably to extant measures of market timing, capturing the explanatory power of such measures of hedge fund performance.

scholarly journals Long-Term Bias

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michal Barzuza ◽  
Eric Talley
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Behavioral Finance ◽  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Wall Street ◽  
Corporate Managers ◽  
Market Participants ◽  
Folk Wisdom ◽  
Earnings Warnings ◽  
Short Termism

An emerging consensus in certain legal, business, and scholarly communities maintains that corporate managers are pressured unduly into chasing short-term gains at the expense of superior long-term prospects. The forces inducing manage- rial myopia are easy to spot, typically embodied by activist hedge funds and Wall Street gadflies with outsized appetites for current quarterly earnings. Warnings about the dangers of “short termism” have become so well established, in fact, that they are now driving changes to mainstream practice as courts, regulators and practitioners fashion legal and transactional constraints designed to insulate firms and managers from the influence of investor short-termism. This Article draws on ac- ademic research and a series of case studies to advance the the- sis that the emergent folk wisdom about short-termism is in- complete. A growing literature in behavioral finance and psychology now provides sound reasons to conclude that corpo- rate managers often fall prey to long-term bias—excessive op- timism about their own long-term projects. We illustrate sev- eral plausible instantiations of such biases using case studies from three prominent companies where managers have argua- bly succumbed to a form of “long-termism” in their own corpo- rate stewardship. Unchecked, long-termism can impose sub- stantial costs on investors that are every bit as damaging as short-termism. Moreover, we argue that long-term managerial bias sheds considerable light on the paradox of why short- termism evidently persists among supposedly sophisticated fi- nancial market participants: shareholder activism—even if unambiguously myopic—can provide a symbiotic counter-bal- last against managerial long-termism. Without a more defini- tive understanding of the interaction between short- and long- term biases, then, policymakers should be cautious about em- bracing reforms that focus solely on half of the problem.

Hedge Fund Activism and Corporate Innovation

2021 ◽  
pp. 380-390
Author(s):  
Roberto S. Santos ◽  
Sunny Li Sun
Keyword(s):  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Hedge Fund ◽  
Innovation Performance ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Term Survival ◽  
Long Term Survival ◽  
Corporate Innovation ◽  
Hedge Fund Activism

While the jury is out on whether hedge fund activism encourages corporate innovation, there is mounting evidence to suggest that this is the case. A firm’s ability to innovate is crucial for its long-term survival. Through multiple mechanisms, activist hedge fund interventions can “shake things up” and stir corporations out of their myopic innovation investments. By bringing an end to the squandering of precious R&D resources, hedge fund activism stimulates and reshapes corporate competitiveness and enhances innovation performance. This chapter explores the strategies and mechanisms that activist hedge funds employ to influence corporate innovation and also offers avenues for future research.

Hedge Funds and Performance Persistence

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nan Qin ◽  
Ying Wang
Keyword(s):  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Hedge Fund ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Performance Persistence ◽  
Attrition Rates ◽  
Short And Long Term ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Long Term Performance ◽  
Term Performance

Despite the exponential growth of global hedge fund assets since the 1990s, the high attrition rates in the industry have raised an important issue about hedge fund return persistence. This chapter discusses the various statistical methodologies in measuring performance persistence and provides a comprehensive review of the empirical literature on short- and long-term performance persistence. In particular, the literature suggests that fund strategies and characteristics are related to performance persistence. The chapter also discusses three important issues: return smoothing, the use of option-like strategies, and data biases. The chapter provides additional empirical evidence on performance persistence, using a portfolio approach and a hedge fund sample from the Trading Advisor Selection System (TASS) database between 1994 and 2015.

Trends and Future Prospects of Hedge Funds

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hunter M. Holzhauer
Keyword(s):  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Hedge Fund ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Fund Managers ◽  
Potential Impact ◽  
Fund Industry

This chapter focuses on new trends in the hedge fund industry. The chapter begins by creating some historical context for the current perception and state of hedge funds. The remainder of this chapter focuses on the following trends and their potential impact on the industry: (1) growth in all areas of the industry, especially in terms of long-term capital flows from institutional investors; (2) uncertainty about growth in the short term; (3) ways hedge funds approach growth; (4) the need for more diversity among hedge fund managers, including more minorities and women; (5) diverging long-term objectives for larger and smaller hedge funds; (6) future cost savings to investors; (7) development of new investment options to address liquidity concerns for investors; (8) new regulations; and (9) the future role of technology in the hedge fund industry.

Hedge Funds and the Collapse of Long-Term Capital Management

CFA Digest ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-78
Author(s):  
David B. Miyazaki
Keyword(s):  
Hedge Funds ◽  
Capital Management
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