Fortress Hedge-Fund Investors Ask to Pull 25% of Cash

Fortress Investment Group LLC's hedge-fund clients have asked to pull more than $4.5 billion, or 25 percent of their money, over the next few months as the company reported its first quarterly loss since going public.

The redemption requests poured in as Fortress's Drawbridge Global Macro funds lost 13.5 percent this year through Sept. 30 and its Special Opportunities funds declined as much as 7.2 percent, the New York-based company said in a statement today. Hedge funds fell an average of 11.6 percent in the same period, according to the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index.

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Fortress said its third-quarter loss was $20 million, or 4 cents a share, compared with a profit of $111 million, or 26 cents, a year earlier. The average per-share estimate of 10 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was a profit of 10 cents.

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Fortress said it received $2.6 billion in withdrawal requests payable through the end of January for its liquid hedge funds, which manage $9.1 billion in assets between the Drawbridge Global Funds and the Fortress Commodities Fund.