Fortress Falls on Report That Macro Fund Lost 7.6% Last Week
(Bloomberg) — Fortress Investment Group LLC fell by the most in two weeks after a report said the firm’s main macro hedge fund lost 7.6 percent last week, a period during which markets were roiled by movements in the Swiss franc.
The New York-based company fell 5.1 percent to $7.52 at 12:39 p.m. in New York, after earlier dropping 5.6 percent, the biggest intraday decrease since Jan. 6. The macro fund’s decline last week brought its losses this year to 7.9 percent, Reuters reported, citing a letter to investors.
Gordon Runte, a spokesman for Fortress, declined to comment.
The franc soared as much as 41 percent against the euro on Jan. 15 after the Swiss National Bank’s surprise decision to remove a three-year-old cap, prompting hundreds of millions of dollars in losses at hedge funds and European banks and pushing some currency-trading firms into insolvency.
Fortress didn’t give a reason for the loss in the letter, according to Reuters. Fortress’s macro strategy, run by Mike Novogratz and Jeff Feig, managed $3.1 billion as of Sept. 30. The firm’s main macro fund lost 1.6 percent in 2014, according to a regulatory filing. That compared with a 0.7 percent gain in global macro funds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
To contact the reporter on this story: Devin Banerjee in New York at dbanerjee2@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Christian Baumgaertel at cbaumgaertel@bloomberg.net Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam, Mary Romano
