As terrified investors demand their money back, hedgies have all the glamour of the Rollers
December 20th, 2008
The Bay City Rollers; image from So Me Cool Cats – Le Blog
Over the past three months, Robert Peston has been a bit too close to the Treasury, Lloyds TSB and HBOS for my liking — as I’ve already alluded to elsewhere (see Sir George on Robert Peston and Peston’s credibility open to question).
For anyone who believes there were alternatives options for HBOS than a government-orchestrated takeover by Lloyds TSB, the way Pesto covered the affair, laced as it was with “scoops” handed out by people who considered him a reliable mouthpiece, was a little nauseating.
However the BBC’s business editor was back on form with a post headlined Made off with all our money published on his blog yesterday. Writing about the reputation of hedge funds in a post-Madoff world, Peston wrote:
Erstwhile superstars of the hedge-fund industry … currently have all the glamour of the Bay City Rollers in the post Shang-a-Lang years.
Excellent analogy, Robert. It made me laugh out loud. Even so, in my book the tartan-clad buffoons didn’t have much glamour, even before their 1974 hit. But then perhaps, nor did hedge fund managers before they were “found out” by the credit crisis.*
(*Editorial note: there are, of course, honourable exceptions to this sweeping generalisation, including SVM Asset Management’s Saltire fund, which returned +19.7% in 2008 compared to a fall of 29.9% in the FTSE All Share Index.)
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