Asia-focused hedge funds have taken a beating this year and investors are shying away from managers who not too long ago were seeing double-digit returns. Funds investing in India and China produced the worst performance of any specific hedge fund classification after leading all hedge funds for much of 2007, according to HedgeFund.net. The HFN India and China Averages were down 14.97% and 8.87% in June, respectively, leaving them down 36.88% and 18.77% in the first half of 2008. Venus Capital Management’s $100 million Special Situations Fund, an India-focused event-driven arbitrage and special-situation strategy, is down 22.25% in the first half.Monsoon India Inflection Fund (down 41.1% year-to-date, up 102.38% in 2007) and newcomer Vishwas India Fund (down 24.48% YTD, up 29.58% 2007).   more »

Launch of trading in currency futures has come at such a time when several Indian corporates have burnt their fingers in another version of currency derivative called Over the Counter (OTC) products few months back, and the issue has turned into a legal battle between suffered companies and banks involved. Though currency futures products like currency swap, currency forwards and currency options were already allowed to corporates in India after Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) circular as on April 2007, but they were not traded on any recognised exchanges in India and were available like OTC products only. As per an official gazette of Government of India (GOI), which is available on RBI's site, a person who is resident of India can now hedge his currency risk by using advanced and complex derivatives like currency forwards, currency swaps and currency options not only through OTC products but also through exchange traded currency futures products.   more »