BNP Paribas is now offering an innovative financing solution designed to help Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and growth-oriented Midcaps with turnover totalling €10 - 250 million to carry out their key long-term projects. The solution consists of a combination of a bank loan and a loan provided through a new European SME debt fund.

USO IV seeks transactions at the smaller end of the secondary market, in which high-quality assets can be acquired at attractive valuations. It focuses on small and middle-market funds, fund restructurings, secondary direct portfolios and structured transactions. It has a net return target of 1.6x cost / 20% IRR.

The Global ICI decreased to 89.7, down 8.3 points from July's revised reading of 98.0. The decline in sentiment was driven by a decrease in the North American ICI from 99.8 to 89.5 and the European ICI from 92.4 to 86.8, along with the Asian ICI falling 2.0 points to 106.1.

This week was uneventful for most hedge fund strategies amid low trading volumes, few market catalysts and limited changes in risk assets' prices. The Lyxor Hedge Fund index was flat. Merger Arbitrage and Global Macro funds were the two exceptions.

After a glorious and rather calm summer, characterised by a broad-based rally by risky assets, range trading by govies and declines in risk perception and volatility, which we examined last week, we now propose to run through the exposure of the main categories of institutional investors. Did they surf on the August wave?