The recent move by the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board (MassPRIM) to reduce their exposure to fund of hedge funds and initiate a direct hedge fund investment program highlights the trend by institutional investors to bypass fund of funds for direct hedge fund investments. In addition to MassPRIM, the $23 billion Employees Retirement System of Texas, the $76 billion Ohio Public Employees Retirement System and the $2.5 billion Texas Permanent School Fund have all begun to lay the groundwork for direct investment programs as well. The charts below illustrate the trend towards direct hedge fund placements:
Without a doubt, German Formula 1™ driver Sebastian Vettel ended this year’s Formula 1 racing season on a high note, winning his second title. Vettel went into his last race of the year with increased confidence, leaving many of the more experienced veteran drivers in his rear view mirror.
In my mind, Vettel’s performance is parallel to recent M&A activity in the Asia Pacific Region (APAC), which has outpaced more mature markets and has shown stronger sequential M&A growth than many regions globally, with a 44 percent increase from Q2 2011 to Q3 2011. The significant traction in deal activity that we observed this quarter in APAC is consistent with an overall flight to long-term growth prospects visible in the market.
IntraLinks® has just announced the general availability of IntraLinks Courier™, the only enterprise-grade solution for ad-hoc information sharing. We designed IntraLinks Courier to enable organizations to extend important enterprise security and compliance controls to more frequent, less formal communications in which information is shared with business partners and customers outside the firewall. It’s as simple to use as email, and allows business users to easily share files as large as 6 GB. Try it for yourself by signing up for a free trial.
A CEO has business meetings in London and Hong Kong, and in the mean time his company is acquiring a manufacturing center in South America. He is working with bankers in New York and Brazil to close the deal. In the interim the deal documents need to be reviewed and exchanged between all parties securely across borders, time zones, and teams. Luckily for the CEO he has an iPad®, so he can access and review documents throughout the deal regardless of whether he is in a taxi, on a train, or in his hotel room between meetings to ensure that the deal runs smoothly.
Ovum, a leading industry and technology analyst firm headquartered in London, has recently published an in-depth research report looking at the benefits and value that IntraLinks provides. The report is titled Technology Audit: IntraLinks Exchanges and is authored by Richard Edwards, a principal analyst at Ovum who focuses on enterprise collaboration and information management. Mr Edwards’ report is an objective representation of the IntraLinks solutions and technology. You can view both the original report and the executive summary.
One highlight from the report is that IntraLinks Exchanges are described as providing a cloud-based collaborative content workspace that offer more security “than a locked boardroom.” Another highlight is Mr. Edwards outlining that organizations following a holistic ECM (Enterprise Content Management) strategy would “find value and utility in the targeted IntraLinks cloud-based solutions”.