hmmm...somethings up, page-65

Hedge Funds are still having their days of fun also with nearly everyone coming to collect what's theirs:

Fortress Halts Redemptions at Hedge Fund
DECEMBER 3, 2008, 2:05 PM

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/fortress-halts-redemptions-at-drawbridge-fund/?ref=business

Fortress Investment Group is closing the gates on investors seeking to pull billions of dollars out of one of its flagship hedge funds.

Fortress, a private equity and hedge fund firm led by Wesley Edens, said in a regulatory filing Wednesday that it had temporarily suspended redemptions at its Drawbridge Global Macro fund after receiving requests to withdraw more than $3.5 billion. It didn’t say how long the halt would last.

Shares of Fortress, which went public in February 2007, plunged 30 percent Wednesday afternoon after the halt was announced.


Like many hedge funds, Fortress’s Drawbridge Global Macro fund has taken a beating from the recent market turmoil. It was down 26 percent from its “high-water mark” — the level at which fund managers can start collecting performance fees — at the end of October, according to its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

As of Sept. 30, the Drawbridge Global Macro funds had $8 billion in assets under management, Fortress said. In Wednesday’s filing Fortress estimated that with the latest wave of redemptions halted, the fund would have $3.65 billion in assets under management on Jan. 1, 2009.

Fortress had been bracing for a rush to the exits. Last month, Mr. Edens said on a conference call that “we expect to experience increased redemptions at year end” in its liquid hedge funds.

Many other hedge fund managers have recently blocked redemptions to prevent a forced fire sale of their investments, including Paul Tudor Jones’s Tudor Investment.