Citi to relaunch hedge fund ops: report

Financial service major Citigroup is planning to relaunch Citi Alternative Investments, a unit that contains its hedge fund operations, a media report said.     

"Citigroup is poised to relaunch the unit containing its troubled hedge fund operations after nearly two years of poor performance, internal strife and investor unrest," the Financial Times said.     

Attributing to people close to the matter, the newspaper said the company wanted to change the name of the unit from Citi Alternative Investments (CAI) to Citi Capital Advisors.     

The daily said the move follows months of wrangling between CAI's management and some top bank executives about what to do with the unit, which has $14 billion under management and also includes private equity operations.     

The fate of CAI is particularly sensitive because the unit is closely associated with Citi's Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, it added.     

According to the publication, CAI is seeking to raise about $2.5 billion in external capital next year and is targeting investors in emerging markets. The unit has, so far, raised a little above $150 million.     

Quoting sources, FT said, John Dorfman and Jim O'Brien, two former Morgan Stanley executives who run CAI, wanted to drop the Citi name for some or all of the unit in an effort to put its troubled past behind it but the idea was rejected.

The report said some executives feared that dropping the Citi name could be a prelude to more dramatic actions such as a spin-off of the hedge fund parts of CAI, or the winding of hedge fund operations if the unit failed to raise more outside funds.     

In the short term, the report said citing insiders, a separation is unlikely because around half of the $2.7 billion in the internal hedge funds comes from Citi.