Hedge Fund and Insider Trading News: Bill Ackman, Citadel LLC, Tiger Global Management, Brevan Howard Asset Management, Hudson Bay Capital Management, Wintrust Financial Corp (WTFC), Southwest Gas Holdings, Inc. (SWX), and More

Billionaire Investor Bill Ackman Says US Banks Depositing $30 Billion into First Republic Creates a ‘False Sense of Confidence’ (Business Insider)
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman has criticized a plan by 11 US banks to deposit $30 billion into First Republic Bank, or FRB, saying it creates a “false sense of confidence” in the San Francisco lender. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, a former Fed chair, has apparently pushed the big Wall Street banks to “recycle” some of the deposits they have received from First Republic, by putting the billions back into the lender, Ackman said in a long tweet on Thursday.

Citadel Accelerates Hiring Push in Hong Kong and London (Reuters)
Miami-based Citadel has kicked off 2023 with multiple senior hires in London and Hong Kong to beef up its international equities team, after the firm became the world’s most profitable hedge fund in 2022, profile updates on LinkedIn show. At least five veteran investment and operational professionals recently joined the non-U.S. equity investment team under the $57 billion hedge fund titan run by billionaire Ken Griffin.

Tiger Global Writes Down Venture Funds’ Bets by 33% in 2022 (The Wall Street Journal)
Tiger Global marked down the value of its investments in private companies by about 33% across its venture-capital funds in 2022, according to people familiar with the firm. The markdowns erased $23 billion in value from Tiger’s giant holdings of startups around the globe, one of the people said. Its private portfolio includes big bets on hundreds of companies including TikTok parent ByteDance and payments company Stripe. In the fourth quarter, Tiger’s newest venture funds lost between 9% and 25%.

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Brevan Howard Grounds a Few Traders After Losses in Bond Rout (Bloomberg)
Brevan Howard Asset Management has grounded some of its traders to stem losses after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank triggered wild moves in the bond market. The macro hedge fund firm curtailed the betting of at least three money managers after they hit maximum loss levels, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The traders all specialized in rates trading, the people said, asking not to be identified because it’s private.

Dan Niles Rings The Register On Meta, What Led The Manager To Sell? (Benzinga)
Dan Niles, founder and portfolio manager of Satori Fund, tweeted Thursday that he trimmed Satori Fund’s position in Meta Platforms Inc (META), citing a poor risk-reward outlook in the near term. Niles’ decision came as Meta’s shares saw a strong year-to-date performance, driven by aggressive cost-cutting measures and the potential ban on TikTok by the U.S. government.