Monday, July 11, 2011

Atlantic International Partnership Headlines:Groupon Founders Turn To Financial News With Benzinga Investment

http://altlanticinternationalpartnership.net/2011/06/atlantic-international-partnership-headlinesgroupon-founders-turn-to-financial-news-with-benzinga-investment/
In their latest investment through a separate seed fund, two Groupon founders are turning their attention towards a new area: financial news.

Lightbank, the seed fund created by Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, is investing $1.5 million in Benzinga.com, a Michigan-based real-time financial news site with trading tips, as well as aggregated content from other sites such as TheStreet.com and WSJ.com, parent site of this blog.
“We like the proposition of an actionable trading information network, and we like the entrepreneurs behind Benzinga,” said Lightbank partner Paul Lee, who joined the fund earlier this year. “We think there has to be a certain brand connotation with these kinds of sites and we see that in Benzinga’s founder.”
Mr. Lee is referring to Jason Raznick, president and co-founder of Benzinga.com, a former associate at Fortress Investment Group and financial news writer who says he bootstrapped his way through the first five months of Benzinga.com.
The site, which launched in early 2010, offers mostly free financial news content as well as a variety of subcription products targeted at traders. Mr. Raznick says the site sees between two and three million page views a month and that the company is already cash flow positive, with the bulk of its revenue coming from advertising.
“I think our site is different from other sites because we’re not saying, go do this in the market, or go buy that stock. We’re offering analysis and saying, if you believe this, here are some ways to do it,” Mr. Raznick says. He says he plans to continue to grow the company, which currently has between 20 and 25 employees, and that future build-outs may include more video products on the Web site.
For Lightbank, the investment is a pivot from the seed fund’s focus on daily deals and social media management start-ups. In the past, the fund has invested in companies like Betterfly.com, a site for listing and finding professional services; Sprout Social (see coverage here), which lets clients access a single dashboard to retrieve data from their company’s Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts; and most recently, Gtrot, which mines users’ social networks like Facebook and Foursquare to help them make plans while traveling.
The Lightbank fund, which Lefkofsky and Keywell formed in the spring of 2010 following the wild success of daily deals site Groupon, has committed to invest $100 million over 10 years. Partner Mr. Lee says the group has invested in 18 start-ups to date.
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Altlantic International Partnership Headlines: Asia stocks draw support from Greek hopes

http://altlanticinternationalpartnership.net/2011/07/altlantic-international-partnership-headlines-asia-stocks-draw-support-from-greek-hopes/

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Japanese and Australian stocks ended higher to lead a broad advance in Asian markets Tuesday on optimism that Greece will be able to avert a disorderly default on national debt.
Several banking and exporter shares were among the gainers.
The European country’s debt troubles, which have worried investors around the globe for months, remain in focus amid uncertainty about this week’s vote in the Greek parliament on austerity measures.
“The equity markets are very cautious, but at the moment [there is] steady acceptance of the view that the Greek vote will support these changes because [of the] limited alternatives,” said Jamie Spiteri, head of trading at Shaw Stockbroking in Sydney.

Markets Hub: Banks fret over capital requirements

Regulators reached an agreement to require the world’s largest and most interconnect banks to increase their levels of capital.
“I think the markets have the capacity to improve once [there is] some clarity on how it’s going to be managed, but I don’t see a rapid recovery. It’ll be a subdued, modest recovery in the market,” said Spiteri.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average /quotes/zigman/715506 JP:NIK +0.66%climbed 0.7% to finish at 9,648.98.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 /quotes/zigman/1653884 AU:XJO +1.07% added 0.3% to 4,474.30 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index inched up 0.1% to 22,061.78.
China’s Shanghai Composite, after rising in the past five sessions, overcame pressure to lock in profits and ended little changed. South Korea’s KospiKR:0100 -0.01% fell 0.4% and Taiwan’s Taiex slipped 0.3%.
The region’s broad advance came in the wake of overnight gains on Wall Street and after French President Nicolas Sarkozy backed a plan to extend the maturity of Greek bonds due in coming years to share the burden of a new aid package with private investors. Read more on Greek debt wrangling.
Several banking stocks rose, with Westpac Banking Corp./quotes/zigman/181294 AU:WBC +1.69% /quotes/zigman/181293 WEBNF +5.22% gaining 1.7% in Sydney, heavyweight HSBC Holdings PLC/quotes/zigman/207333/quotes/nls/hbc HBC -0.56%/quotes/zigman/13834 HK:5 +0.32% adding 0.4% in Hong Kong, KB Financial Group Inc. /quotes/zigman/525922/quotes/nls/kb KB +0.88%adding 0.4% in Seoul and United Overseas Bank Ltd. up 0.7% in Singapore.
In Japan, many exporters finished higher, with Canon Inc./quotes/zigman/192225/quotes/nls/caj CAJ +0.50% JP:7751 +1.82%adding 0.8% and Fanuc Ltd. /quotes/zigman/527618 FANUY +0.99%JP:6954 +0.92% rising 2.6%.
Panasonic Corp. JP:6752 -0.30% /quotes/zigman/525474/quotes/nls/pc PC -1.12% climbed 1.2% after the Nikkei reported that the firm will cut subsidiary Sanyo Electric Co.’s work force by more than 10,000 employees globally this year.
Nippon Steel Corp. JP:5401 0.00% /quotes/zigman/196313 NISTF +0.60% climbed 2% on another report in the Nikkei that the steelmaker has agreed with Nissan Motor Co. JP:7201 +0.81% /quotes/zigman/202910 NSANY -0.65% to raise steel-sheet prices by 15%, and that its talks with Toyota Motor Co. /quotes/zigman/199376/quotes/nls/tm TM -0.28%JP:7203 +1.32% were under way.
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The two auto makers underperformed, with Nissan losing 2.4%, while Toyota rose 0.2%, less than the broad market.
In Hong Kong, shares of China Yurun Food Group Ltd./quotes/zigman/35032 HK:1068 -4.57% gave up 5.9%, on top of Monday’s 19.8% plunge, amid several media reports citing market speculation that research house Muddy Waters PLC, described in some reports as a short seller, may issue a report on the company.
Many stocks in the resources sector also rose in line with a bounce in some commodities after a weak streak recently.
Commodities staged a bit of a rebound in Nymex electronic trading on Tuesday, with front-month Nymex crude-oil futures up 42 cents to $91.03 a barrel. Spot gold, meanwhile, added $5.40 to $1,502.30 a troy ounce.
The bounce follows a soft patch of manufacturing and other economic data recently from within Asia, especially in China and India, which have weighed on commodity prices.
But some analysts said the cautious tone prevailing in the marketplace was likely to linger.
“The downgrading of U.S. growth forecasts, coupled with the ebb and flow of sentiment over Greece ahead of a key parliamentary vote on an austerity plan, and slower factory output growth in China indicates the metals markets will remain cautious in the short term, and rallies will be sold,” Robin Bhar, commodities analyst at Credit Agricole, wrote in a note to clients.
Bhar was referring to the U.S. Federal Reserve’s economic-growth revision and recent Chinese manufacturing data.
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Our Advantage Approach

http://www.atlanticinternationalpartnership.com/ouradvantage/approach.html

Here at AIP we aim to deliver to all our clients a consistent level of returns on their investments. We aim to do this by applying our dedicated methods strictly to any investment process. Our processes are built around our thorough efforts into investment research and our strong focus on asset allocation according to the kind of investment profile our clients possess. Such investment profiles are determined by one of our senior advisers after a successful interview of a prospective client investor. Through these actions we are able to construct for each investor a innovative portfolio. Such a construction involves the development of an investment strategy, the appropriate asset allocation and a combination our best investment managers and our extensive portfolio of companies.

  1. Investment Research: One of our core principles is our research initiative. The quality and the integrity of our research is of the utmost importance to any investment process.

  1. Asset Allocation: We believe asset allocation is paramount in it’s importance in the delivery of the best possible returns for our client investors.

  1. Investment Managers: AIP actively seeks to identify investment managers who have shown superior investment capabilities.
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Our Advantage Strategy

http://www.atlanticinternationalpartnership.com/ouradvantage/strategy.html

Our teams of advisors and analysts at AIP are involved in the drawing up of investment strategies for our clients. They are always aware of each individuals investment profile and understand the need to consider various alternatives. While investments in equities is going to be the fundamental part of the portfolio construction, we understand that these are to be viewed as medium to long term. we fully understand the need for you to hold sufficient funds that are easily accessible from bank accounts. In making recommendations we also consider lower risk investments such as Government Bonds. Any well balanced portfolio should have exposure to companies from foreign markets.

At AIP we have adopted a disciplined approach towards investment. The process is under the management of three teams:
  1. AIP’s Asset Allocation Team: Our team hold regular meetings to discuss AIP’s overall investment strategies and asset allocations.

  1. AIP’s Equity Selection Panel: The panel are responsible for AIP’s stock and market sector selections.

  1. AIP’s Investment Committee: The committee reviews the range of alternative investment opportunities and provides the results to our investment managers.

AIP hold a regular schedule of internal meetings where information is discussed between portfolio managers and senior analysts. Investment managers use this information in the management of our investor clients portfolios in line with their objectives.
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