Hedge Fund Marshall Wace Takes Short Position in Danske Bank (Reuters)
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Hedge fund Marshall Wace is betting on Danske Bank (DANSKE.CO) shares falling after taking a short position in the Danish lender of 0.5% of issued shares, the Danish FSA said on Friday. The hedge fund, co-founded by British financier Paul Marshall, is the first to take a short position in Danske Bank at or above 0.5% which is the threshold for disclosing a short position to the authorities, according to the FSA.
Bill Ackman Finishes 2019 With a Bang (Institutional Investor)
Pershing Square triumphs, making back four years of losses – and earning incentive fees. A little more than three years ago, a Vanity Fair headline asked the question: “Is Bill Ackman Toast?” At the time, Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital hedge fund firm was sinking under its disastrous bet on Canadian pharmaceuticals rollup Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, its investors were starting to bolt, and the naysayers were writing Ackman off. But while several star managers including John Griffin and Leon Cooperman have since closed up shop, and hedge funds in general have lost their golden sheen, Ackman has defied the odds – and then some.
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Lone Pine Beat the Market in 2019 (Institutional Investor)
The Tiger Cub posted big gains after Stephen Mandel, Jr. relinquished day-to-day control of the hedge fund. Talk about a seamless transition. Lone Pine Capital’s two main funds easily beat the major market indices in 2019 after posting strong returns in the fourth quarter, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. It was the first year founder Stephen Mandel, Jr. stopped running the portfolios on a day-to-day basis.
David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital Rebounded 14% in 2019 After a Record Slump the Year Before (Business Insider)
David Einhorn‘s Greenlight Capital trailed the S&P 500 in 2019, but still ended the year in the green after its worst performance ever in 2018. Greenlight returned nearly 14% in 2019 after dipping 0.3% in December, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. The S&P 500 rose 29% in the same year, posting its best annual performance since 2013. His main fund had declined 34% in 2018, the worst performance since its creation in 1996. After, Einhorn called 2018 “the year where we didn’t get anything right” and reworked his portfolio at the start of 2019.
Living with Negative Rates on Danish Mortgages (Hedge Nordic)
London (HedgeNordic) – Some Danish individuals can now get a mortgage at a negative rate, and this could still be profitable for local Danish banks, which can fund themselves at interest rates that are even lower. The same logic applies to a number of leveraged investors. “Danish bullet mortgages now have a yield curve ranging from minus 65 basis points at one year to plus 10 basis points at ten year maturities, while convertible mortgages – with prepayment risk – might only pay 0.50% to 1% even at the most common thirty year maturity”, says Formuepleje portfolio manager, Rene Rømer. These rates have come down by at least 70 to 80 basis points over the past year. But Formuepleje’s cost of leverage has now also come down well below minus 0.5% from minus 0.40% a year ago.
Highland Capital Founder Could Not Be Happier To Not Be A Hedge Fund Manager Anymore (Deal Breaker)
You might think that Highland Capital Management founder James Dondero wanted to continue managing his hedge fund. After all, he’s been fighting his investors in court for years to retain that privilege. But then you remember that for Dondero, litigation is essentially sport, and now that said hedge fund is bankrupt, he can finally rid himself of those investors of whom he thinks so little. Plus, it frees him up to pursue his non-courtroom-based passion projects.
Acorda Jumps on Point72 Investment (BayStreet.ca)
Acorda Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACOR) shares hiked after Point72 reported a 9.8% passive stake in the company. The company currently markets two products: Ampyra (dalfampridine) to improve walking in MS patients and Inbrija (levodopa inhalation powder) for OFF episodes in Parkinson’s patients. The company is expecting the latter to be the growth driver since the former now has generic competition. Q3 revenue was $47.7 million, down 67%. The company, based in Ardsley, New York, finished calendar 2019 by completing a private exchange of $276 million aggregate principal amount of its 1.75% Convertible Senior Notes due June 2021 for a combination of approximately $207 million aggregate principal amount of newly issued 6.00% Convertible Senior Secured Notes due 2024 and $55.2 million in cash.
Prosecutors Have Been Using The Wrong Insider Trading Law All This Time (Deal Breaker)
The ongoing semanto-linguistic debate over the being and bounds of insider-trading has driven men to hope, despair and the brink of madness, It has even driven Congress to consider that most unprecedented act of all: doing something about it. But what if it were all for naught? What if prosecutors have always (or, at least for the last 17 years) had a bulletproof definition ready to hand, and were just using the wrong part of the criminal code? The very court that started all of the drama thinks they do, which is pretty embarrassing for all involved, and exceptionally bad news for Medicare inside dirt peddler David Blaszczak.
Sprawling Insider-Trading Case Heads to Trial (The Wall Street Journal)
The first trial to emerge from a years long investigation into an alleged international insider-trading ring is set to begin next week in Manhattan, a case likely to shed light on a network of high flying securities traders and investment bankers who authorities say were responsible for tens of millions of dollars in illicit profits. The defendant, New York businessman Telemaque Lavidas, is accused of passing inside information about a publicly traded U.S. biotechnology company to a Greek securities trader, Georgios Nikas,…
Becton, Dickinson And Co (BDX) Chairman, CEO and President Vincent A Forlenza Sold $9.1 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
Chairman, CEO and President of Becton, Dickinson And Co., Vincent A Forlenza, sold 33,365 shares of BDX on 01/02/2020 at an average price of $271.28 a share. The total sale was $9.1 million. Becton, Dickinson and Co is a healthcare company. It manufacture and sales medical supplies, devices, laboratory equipment and diagnostic products. It operates in two segments BD Medical and BD Life Sciences. Becton, Dickinson and Co has a market cap of $73.26 billion; its shares were traded at around $270.32 with a P/E ratio of 69.31 and P/S ratio of 4.27.
A Director at On Track Innovations (Other OTC: OTIVF) is Buying Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, a Director at On Track Innovations (OTIVF), William Carl Anderson, bought shares of OTIVF for $208K. Following this transaction William Carl Anderson’s holding in the company was increased by 1733.33% to a total of $279.4K. In addition to William Carl Anderson, 2 other OTIVF executives reported Buy trades in the last month.
Six Individuals Charged in $35-MILLION International Microcap Fraud Schemes (HedgeCo.net)
(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged six individuals and their companies with participating in schemes that allegedly generated more than $35 million of illegal sales of stock in at least 45 microcap companies. The charges contained in two complaints reflect investigations by staff in the SEC’s New York and Boston offices, and assistance from multiple regulators outside the U.S. According to one SEC complaint, Steve M. Bajic, a citizen of Canada and Croatia, and Rajesh Taneja, a Canadian citizen, helped shareholders secretly dump large quantities of microcap stock, coordinating the illegal stock sales with Kenneth Ciapala, a citizen of the U.K. and Switzerland, and Anthony Killarney, a U.K. citizen, and Swiss-based company Blacklight SA.
