New York Life Investment Management has acquired IndexIQ, a leader in the liquid alternative exchange-traded fund industry, for an undisclosed amount.

The high-profile acquisition is NYLIMs first foray into the ETF space.

Upon closing of the transaction, IndexIQ will be integrated into NYLIM and marketed through New York Lifes MainStay Investments platform. It will add $1.5 billion to MainStay’s $101 billion in assets under management.

“Our entry into the ETF space is a significant leap forward for New York Life Investment Management and offers remarkable opportunities all around,” said Drew Lawton, NYLIM CEO, in a statement. “Retail and institutional investors are increasingly attracted to ETFs because they offer a cost-effective, transparent way to access investment opportunities across asset classes around the globe. IndexIQ has established itself as a true innovator and market leader offering the next generation of liquid alternative ETFs, and we intend to leverage IndexIQ’s capabilities to become the dominant provider of non-traditional ETF solutions to the marketAt the same time, IndexIQ provides a robust ETF platform that New York Life can use to consider new and diverse offerings in the future.”  more

   MarketsMuse Editor Note: Below extract is courtesy of the HF Industrys best read publication, FinAlternatives.

Sep 10 2014 | 2:43pm ET

A high-profile hedge fund manager is caught up in a nasty child custody battle in Georgia.

Renee Haugerud, founder of the New York-based commodity-focused hedge fund Galtere, is embroiled in a dispute between her husband, John Murphy, and his ex-wife Michelle Murphy—a dispute that has sparked a social media campaign to “free” the Murphys two children.

According to Michelle Murphy, her sons—15-year-old Jack and 13-year-old Thomas—are being “held against their will” by their father at the home he shares with Haugerud on St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

to his father and stepmother.

“I am not permitted to contact them,” Michelle Murphy told FINalternatives. “They are being held with no cell phones, no home phones, no internetcameras in every room, intercoms in every room. Nobody is allowed to come into the house. Theyre being imprisoned.”

The current situation stems from the Murphys 2006 divorce, during which Michelle was granted primary custody of the boys and alimony of $1,500 per child per month.

In 2012, John, now married to Haugerud, applied for increased visiting time or primary custody. According to the court filings, John was prompted to act by fears Michelle planned to move from Newnan, Georgia to South Carolina with the children, a move Michelle said she never contemplated. Haugerud told FINalternatives John simply wanted more time with his children.

Michelles lawyer, Millard Farmer, said: “When it looked like the judge was going to rule against them and just give Michelle the children…, then John tells the custody evaluator that one of the children told him that the mother was fondling the children, which was an absolute lie.”

  Below excerpt is hot of the press and courtesy of one of MarketsMuses favorite outlets: FINalternatives..

Coin Capital Management is this week launching a Bitcoin-focused hedge fund, which will buy and hold the leading crypto-currency in an institutional grade environment.

“We are pretty excited about Bitcoin…it is an exciting payment technology,” said Samuel Cahn, managing partner at the New York-based firm. “We are fully dedicated to holding Bitcoin, and we are the first ones to do so in an institutional grade hedge fund using the same types of checks and balances that investors have come to expect.”

For the rest of the reporting, please visit FINalternatives

The AlphaClone Alternative Alpha ETF (ALFA), which began trading on Thursday, will invest in disclosed equity positions held by established hedge fund managers—the first ETF to do so.

The new ETF “seeks to capture alpha from these managers’ long positions while protecting against protracted market downturns through a dynamic hedge mechanism.” Its strategy has been derived from the research and hedge fund replication methodology developed by AlphaClone and its founder and CEO Mazin Jadallah and is based on the passive, risk-managed AlphaClone Hedge Fund Long/Short Index.

The index directly selects its long positions from public disclosures using a proprietary ranking system which measures the efficacy of following managers based on their disclosures over a complete market cycle (since 2000). The index also incorporates a rules-based hedge mechanism that adjusts holdings between being long-only and market-hedged based on certain technical price targets for a broad index of U.S. equities.

“AlphaClone offers our separate account clients strategies that expertly combine long hedge fund equity positions with disciplined downside protection,” says Jadallah, “With the introduction of ALFA, investors around the world can now access our proven investment approach in a transparent and easy to access vehicle that can help navigate today’s challenging market environment.”

The ETF is the first to result from AlphaClone’s partnership with the International Securities Exchange, a leading U.S. options exchange.

Exchange Traded Concepts serves as investment adviser to the new ETF.

May 25 2012 | 3:26am ET

Metals trading hedge fund RK Capital Management has thrown down the gauntlet to JPMorgan Chase over the latters plan to launch a physical copper exchange-traded fund.

Lawyers for the firm, which runs the Red Kite hedge funds, warned the Securities and Exchange Commission that the ETF would inflate prices, harm supply and wreak havoc on the U.S. and global economy. The May 9 letter said that the ETF, which JPMorgan has been planning for two years, could remove up to one-third of the copper stocks traded on the London Metal Exchange.

RK followed up the letter with a visit with the SEC last week.

The letter also raised the specter of one of the biggest copper scandals in history, the 1995 Sumitomo fraud. While RKs lawyers did not suggest anything untoward about JPMorgans plans, they did warn that, as with the Sumitomo scandal, the ETF would facilitate the fixing of prices, having investors underwrite the costs of holding physical copper.

RK is joined in its battle—the first public opposition to the ETF—by Southwire, one of the largest copper users in the U.S.

Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokers broker that literally rose from the ashes of 9/11 to rebuild its business trafficking in multiple product types, including ETFs and options, and positions itself as an agency-only aka conflict-free broker, today announced the second phase of its plan to expand into the [often-conflicted] territory of hedge-fund seeding.

Cantor, which by virtue of its gargantuan global footprint, often finds itself not only standing in between captive buyers and sellers, but has occasionally been embroiled in issues that strike at the epicenter of the famous  Chinese Wall.  However much the strategy of a broker providing trading capital to its customers might seem to present potential conflicts with regard to the firms  agency-only execution model, one source who is not authorized by his firm to publicly comment, suggested ..industry watchers are confident that Cantor will always do the right thing.. Link to the full story by clicking on the FINAlternatives log.