West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) - NorthPoint Trading Partners, LLC has opened a new office in Chicago, IL., with 12 year industry veteran, Michael Ferro, as head. Ferro has held positions at Genworth Financial, Knight Capital Markets, and X-Change Financial Access. He is experienced in both the trading and operations aspects of the buy and sell side, the company said.

“As we continue to expand our presence nationwide, we are very fortunate to have someone with Michael’s talent and experience join our team,” says Douglas Nelson, Chief Executive Officer of NorthPoint Trading Partners, LLC. Atlanta based NorthPoint opened also opened an office in Connecticut earlier in the year.

NorthPoint is an institutional brokerage and fund services company working with small and medium sized hedge funds.

HedgeCo.net (West Palm Beach) - A survey by RSM McGladrey, a financial services consultancy, found that hedge fund managers are surprisingly ready to work with SEC regulators to cooperate with authority, despite wide-spread wariness about over-excessive regulation from the Obama administration.

However, the Obama financial regulatory plan was a top concern with 75%, fearing that further regulation will go too far and stifle the market’s recovery.

The survey polled more than 100 hedge fund managers during the last month and focused on hedge fund industry sentiment toward the Obama administration regulation.

Nearly half of the respondents (42%) thought that the SEC should be given more regulatory authority than it currently has. Slightly less (37%) felt that the hedge fund industry should be subject to more direct regulatory authority.

Fund managers are also optimistic about the industry’s prospects, according to the survey. 60% believe the current environment provides more investment opportunities than challenges. An overwhelming majority (69%) see the U.S. economy returning to positive growth by Q2 2010.

Hedge fund managers’ opinion on the Public Private Investment Program (PPIP), showed nearly 80% of fund managers believe there can be a successful market for toxic assets, such as underwater mortgage backed securities. However, only 33% of the funds speculated that they would be at all interested in purchasing these securities in the future, raising some concerns about the level of private investor participation.

The full report is available for download on the RSM McGladrey Web site.

Editing by Alex Akesson
Email: alex@hedgeco.net

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