Asia has become the company’s engine for growth, complementing its more established and mature UK and US businesses.Mikir Shah, an analyst for Fox Pitt Kelton, said: “Pru’s Asian operations have been growing very strongly. The company made its name selling “flat pack” kitchens and bedrooms but has come under pressure in recent years from growing demand for custom-built fittings. The attorney general of California is promising to press charges over the impersonation of at least two directors and 10 journalists which enabled HP’s private eyes to access confidential phone records.HP shares fell by 5.2 per cent yesterday – making it the biggest faller in the Dow Jones index – as newspapers reported internal e-mails showing how Mr Hurd approved some aspects of the leak investigation.Until now, Mr Hurd had escaped suspicion of being too heavily involved. He has won plaudits on Wall Street for turning around HP’s trading performance since becoming chief executive 18 months ago, and when Patricia Dunn, the chairman and the person in charge of the leak investigation, agreed earlier this month to stand down to defuse the scandal, HP’s board said Mr Hurd would add the chairmanship to his role in January.. Many of the tactics have provoked hilarity – including a scheme to infiltrate the newsrooms of several major US newspapers – but others have attracted the attention of state and federal prosecutors.

Today he will set out exactly what he knew about the controversial investigation into boardroom leaks, which involved impersonating directors to obtain their phone records and trying to trap journalists into revealing their sources.
It emerged yesterday that Mr Hurd approved an elaborate sting operation to send e-mails containing inside information to a San Francisco journalist, and then electronically follow where she forwarded the e-mails.Silicon Valley has been transfixed by the unfolding saga, and stunned by the lengths HP went to in order to track down the source of boardroom leaks. Mark Hurd, the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, has been drawn into the spiraling spying scandal at the computer manufacturer. Man Group, the FTSE 100 hedge fund manager, is one of dozens of companies to have admitted multimillion dollar exposure to Amaranth.. Although hedge funds are closed to all but the wealthiest and most sophisticated individuals, pension funds are allocating larger amounts to these “alternative investments”, and a whole industry has grown up offering “funds of funds”. We assure you that we are eager to do so.”By moving quickly to dump the energy portfolio and a string of other investments, Amaranth was able to meet all the cash calls from its lenders. Observers of the hedge fund industry said all those involved had learned significant lessons from that debacle.But in the past eight years, hedge funds have moved closer to the investment mainstream. Even at its peak, it was borrowing less than $5 for every $1 its backers had invested, making it a much less highly leveraged hedge fund than LTCM.

But Mr Maounis faces questions over how he allowed Mr Hunter to put so much of the fund’s capital at risk, particularly since the trader already had a reputation as an aggressive risk-taker. He is currently suing his former employer, Deutsche Bank, for removing him from their trading desk and denying him a bonus after he racked up losses there.Mr Maounis told his backers in a letter: “Amaranth is determined to earn back its investors’ trust, and one step towards that end is to share as much information as we reasonably can. Amaranth’s star trader, 32-year-old Brian Hunter, was one of the few hedge fund traders still betting that natural gas would rise, even as commodities prices were sliding sharply.Amaranth’s assets had swollen to $9bn at their peak a month ago, making it one of America’s most influential hedge funds, with all the usual trappings of the industry, including plenty of luxuries for employees, including a private recording studio at its Connecticut headquarters where traders can relax by jamming on the company’s guitars.The fund’s success in the past 18 months came largely because of ballsy and successful bets in the energy market by Mr Hunter. Some 65 per cent of Amaranth’s value has been wiped out by ruinous bets on the natural gas market.
Citigroup, one of the financial services giants which helped bail out LTCM eight years ago, emerged as a potential white knight investor to prop up what is left of the fund, but some other backers are already demanding that it be wound up.Mr Maounis, a long-time hedge fund trader who set up Amaranth in 2000, said a firesale of assets over the past few days had saved the fund from a forced liquidation by its creditors. The transfer of that and other assets at below their remaining market value had swelled Amaranth’s losses from the $4.5bn first reported at the weekend, when it first admitted that its bets in the natural gas market had gone badly wrong. On Wednesday, Amaranth in effect gave away the energy portfolio that led to its downfall to a consortium comprising JP Morgan and the Chicago hedge fund Citadel.