Billionaire Leon Cooperman’s Top Picks and Two Positions He Doubled

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

– Number of shares owned by Omega Advisors as of March 31: 1.76 Million

– Value of Omega Advisors’ holding as of March 31: $96.98 Million

The New York-based asset manager added 946,920 shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) to its existing position in the tech giant during the January-to-March period. The stake of 1.76 million shares held on March 31 was valued at $96.98 million and made up 2.6% of Omega’s entire portfolio. Amazon Web Services (AWS), a set of cloud computing services provided by e-commerce behemoth Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), dominates the public cloud industry with a market share of roughly 31%. Meanwhile, Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform that offers a similar set of products focused on storage, networking and infrastructure, holds the second-largest market share in the public cloud market with a 9% cut. While Microsoft has been channeling massive amounts of capital into research and development to expand the reach of its cloud product, Microsoft Azure will have a hard time dethroning AWS as the ultimate leader in the cloud market. Microsoft’s shares have dropped 8% year-to-date. Ken Fisher’s Fisher Asset Management owns 18.22 million shares of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) as of March 31.

American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG)

– Number of shares owned by Omega Advisors as of March 31: 3.51 Million

– Value of Omega Advisors’ holding as of March 31: $189.90 Million

Leon Cooperman’s $5.2 billion-investment firm trimmed its stake in American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) by 583,200 shares during the March quarter to 3.51 million shares. The reduced stake was worth $189.90 million on March 31 and constituted 5.1% of the fund’s portfolio, being the third-largest in terms of value. The insurer has been under pressure from activist investors Carl Icahn and John Paulson since the second half of 2015 to break up into three parts that would focus on life, property-casualty and mortgage coverage insurance. Just recently, AIG, keen on retaining operations in both life insurance and property-casualty coverage, elected Mr. Paulson of Paulson & Co. and a representative of Mr. Icahn’s firm to the Board in an attempt to avoid disturbing proxy fights amid an ongoing de-conglomeration process. The share price of AIG’s stock has declined 8% since the start of the year. The number of hedge funds monitored by Insider Monkey invested in AIG declined to 94 from 101 during the first quarter. Carl Icahn’s Icahn Capital LP owns 44.42 million shares of American International Group Inc. (NYSE:AIG) as of the end of March.