SAC confident despite $1.7bn claim

A spokesman for troubled hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors LP said its client withdrawals, said to be $1.7 billion, would not derail the U.S. investment firm. The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday that sources said clients had requested withdrawals totaling about a quarter of the fund's pool of client investments. The hedge fund where six employees have been ensnared in an insider trading investigation, however, manages $6 billion in outside capital and about $9 billion belonging to the company, which is controlled by billionaire Steven Cohen. "As we have been saying, the redemptions will have no significant impact on our funds," the spokesman said in a statement. Sources said SAC would return $660 million in March and spread out the rest of the redemptions throughout 2013, the Journal said. The Journal also said the retreat would have been more pronounced if SAC had not relaxed its rules on redemption requests, which showed the hedge fund was confident about its position. Because of the rule changes, a major investor, Blackstone Group LP, switched its plans to withdraw its entire $550 investment and requested less than $100 million instead, a source told the Journal. "Redemptions breed redemptions, and what they have to be careful of is the momentum shifting so people start putting in redemptions regardless of whether they think (the investigation) is going to go further or not," said Brad Balter, an investment manager who has no investment ties to SAC.