Hedge Fund and Insider Trading News: Bill Ackman, Schonfeld Strategic Advisors, Accendo Capital, Herman Miller, Inc. (MLHR), Irhythm Technologies Inc (IRTC), and More

Schonfeld Raises More Than $1 Billion for Flagship Hedge Fund (Bloomberg)
Schonfeld Strategic Advisors raised more than $1 billion for its flagship hedge fund, double expectations, attracting fresh money from new and existing investors following the March selloff, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Backers including sovereign wealth funds, endowments and family offices contributed to the Schonfeld Strategic Partners Fund, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is private. The inflows helped boost the amount of client capital the New York multi-manager hedge-fund firm oversees to about $5.5 billion.

Ackman’s Blank-Check IPO Is Latest Stop on His Comeback Tour (The Wall Street Journal)
Hedge-fund billionaire William Ackman has come roaring back after years of dwindling assets and a self-imposed exile from the spotlight. But the famed activist investor’s recent wins haven’t been fueled by publicly agitating for companies to change. They have instead come from outside-the-box moves like the one that will be on display next week, when Mr. Ackman is expected to launch an initial public offering of the biggest blank-check company ever, raising money to take a future acquisition public.

Bain Capital Extends Deadline for Japan’s Nichiigakkan Bid for Second Time (Reuters)
TOKYO (Reuters) – U.S. buyout fund Bain Capital said on Thursday it had extended its deadline for a $1 billion buyout offer for Japanese nursing home operator Nichiigakkan Co for a second time. Bain’s bid to buy all of Nichiigakkan’s shares has been extended to Aug. 3 from Thursday as the company’s stock is trading above Bain’s offer of 1,500 yen per share.

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Coronavirus a ‘Once-in-a-Lifetime Opportunity’ for Debt Investors: Billionaire Marc Lasry (Yahoo Finance)
Household names Hertz (HTZ), J.C. Penney, and Neiman Marcus make up a fraction of the thousands of companies that have declared bankruptcy since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. The downturn may spell misery for employees and business owners, but it offers a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for debt investors, who can do “extremely well” making loans to companies that falter, says Marc Lasry, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive of hedge fund Avenue Capital, which specializes in investments in distressed businesses.

Contra Costa County Employees Invests $130 million in Acadian Hedge Fund (Pension&Investments)
Contra Costa County Employees’ Retirement System, Concord, Calif., invested $130 million in the Acadian Multi-Asset Absolute Return Fund. The $8.9 billion pension fund’s board approved the investment in the multistrategy hedge fund managed by Acadian Asset Management at its meeting Wednesday, CEO Gail Strohl said in an email. The hedge fund’s aim is “to deliver alpha and diversification by investing, taking both long and short positions, in a variety of global asset classes including equities, fixed income, foreign exchange, commodities and volatility,” according to board meeting materials.

Business as Usual for Accendo (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Accendo Capital may have started off 2020 on the wrong foot after suffering its worst month on record in February, but that performance dip was soon forgotten. The activist fund ended the first half of 2020 up 25 percent after enjoying its best month in April and breezed past the €100 million assets under management mark, reflecting a combination of strong performance and new capital inflows. 2020 has been “really quite eventful,” says Elise Auer, Director of Investor Relations at Accendo. “But who hasn’t had an unusual 2020?”

K2 Advisors Flags Up Fresh Opportunities for Hedge Funds, as Economies Emerge from Coronavirus Carnage (Hedge Week)
Pricing dislocations across a broad range of industries and geographies, coupled with an increasingly fragmented macroeconomic landscape stemming from divergent emergency central bank measures, will throw up a wealth of investment opportunities for macro, equity and credit hedge fund strategies in the second half of 2020, K2 Advisors, the global fund advisory unit of Franklin Templeton, has said. The firm’s third quarter hedge fund strategy outlook pointed to potential economic tailwinds stemming from increased consumer spending post-lockdown, a weakening US dollar, and higher commodity prices.

Founder of a $1.4 Billion Hedge Fund Buys XRP, Hopes to See XRP at All-Time Highs Soon (Herald Sheets)
Former PM at Goldman Sachs, Will Meade, who founded a $1.4 billion hedge fund, has recently made it public that he just bought XRP, which is his first-ever crypto purchase. He shared this new development with his teeming followers on Twitter a couple of hours ago. According to the tweet, Meade has very little knowledge about cryptocurrency, however, he believes that a rise in the leading cryptocurrency, Bitcoin (BTC), is likely to impact XRP as it was in the past.

Thursday 7/9 Insider Buying Report: MLHR, SYNH (Nasdaq.com)
At Miller Herman, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, Director Michael A. Volkema purchased 25,000 shares of MLHR, at a cost of $21.44 each, for a total investment of $536,000. Miller Herman is trading up about 1.3% on the day Thursday. Before this latest buy, Volkema made one other purchase in the past year, buying $548,452 shares for a cost of $21.94 each. And at Syneos Health, there was insider buying on Monday, by Director John M. Dineen who bought 8,691 shares for a cost of $59.11 each, for a total investment of $513,725. Syneos Health is trading up about 0.2% on the day Thursday. Bargain hunters can snag SYNH even cheaper than Dineen did, with shares changing hands as low as $55.90 in trading on Thursday — that’s 5.4% below Dineen’s purchase price.

Irhythm Technologies Inc (IRTC) EVP, Sales David A Vort Sold $1.3 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
EVP, Sales of Irhythm Technologies Inc, David A Vort, sold 11,264 shares of IRTC on 07/06/2020 at an average price of $114.34 a share. The total sale was $1.3 million. iRhythm Technologies Inc is a commercial-stage digital healthcare company redefining the way cardiac arrhythmias are clinically diagnosed by combining wearable biosensing technology with cloud-based data analytics and machine-learning capabilities.

A Director at Science Applications is Exercising Options (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday it was reported that a Director at Science Applications (SAIC), Robert Bedingfield, exercised options to buy 6,278 SAIC shares at $32.03 a share, for a total transaction value of $201.1K. Following Robert Bedingfield’s last SAIC Buy transaction on September 03, 2015, the stock climbed by 32.9%. Following this transaction Robert Bedingfield’s holding in the company was increased by 31.95% to a total of $1.87 million.