Sparx Fund Manager Warns of Risks for Dollar
Author: Kana Inagaki</br></br>TOKYO--The dollar could fall to a record low against the yen this year if a gradual economic recovery in the U.S. runs out of steam or inflation concerns spread from emerging economies to still-fragile regions such as Europe, a fund manager at a unit of Asia's second-largest hedge fund said Thursday.</br></br>"The main scenario remains that the U.S. economy will further expand ahead of next year's presidential election," Fumihito Akiyama, a fund manager at the asset-management unit of Sparx Group Co., a Japanese hedge fund with $8.1 billion in assets, said in an interview.</br></br>But Mr. Akiyama said investors must acknowledge the risk of a sharp fall in the dollar in the event of a surprise deterioration in U.S. macroeconomic data or a third round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve--possibilities ruled out by many in the market.</br></br>He added that safe-haven flows into the yen could push the dollar below its record low of 79.75 yen against the Japanese currency in 2011 if inflation fears spread from rapidly growing emerging countries to other parts of the global economy.