Vivendi Sells a 7.1% Stake of UMG to Pershing Square for $2.8 Billion (Reuters)
PARIS, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Billionaire hedge fund manager William Ackman on Tuesday bought 7.1% of Universal Music Group from French conglomerate Vivendi (VIV.PA) and pledged to keep buying after his original plan to acquire a 10% stake in the record label for his blank-check company collapsed. Vivendi said the transaction was valued at $2.8 billion, based on an enterprise value of 35 billion euros ($41.01 billion) for 100% of UMG’s share capital.
Victor Khosla Warns Distressed-Debt Hedge Funds Are Losing Their Edge (Bloomberg)
Victor Khosla has a message for his peers in the world of distressed-debt investing: You’re losing your edge. Buying up beaten-down bonds and loans to take control of troubled companies is supposed to be strategic — not to mention secretive. Yet some creditors are all too willing to team up in the courtroom. Others are quick to flip their stakes, rather than make a longer-term investment in the companies they helped restructure. And just about all distressed buyers lean on Wall Street to execute their trades.
$2.6 Billion Hedge Fund Gladstone Hires a Fidelity Portfolio Manager and a Former Arrowgrass Partner to Boost its Lineup (Business Insider)
UK-based Gladstone Capital has boosted its leadership team with a new COO and a new sector head of technology, a source familiar with the matter told Insider. The global long short equity manager tapped Sumant Wahi as partner and sector head of technology. London-based Wahi joined the firm this month after serving as a portfolio manager for Fidelity International’s Future Connectivity fund, a global technology, media, and telecoms mutual fund, and an analyst responsible for US software and internet investments for over six years.
Photo by Marga Santoso on Unsplash
Record Month for Calgus (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Calgus Fond has scored its largest monthly gain on record after booking a gain of 11.8 percent in July. The long-biased long/short equity fund run by Gustaf von Sivers and Carl Urban is now up 30.6 percent in the first seven months of 2021 and currently ranks as the third-best performing member of the Nordic Hedge Index this year. “July was our best month ever,” Gustaf von Sivers tells Swedish business magazine Dagens Industri (DI). “It is our three large holdings that have pulled away.” XANO, which develops, acquires and operates niche engineering companies, has seen its share price rise 200 percent this year and 50 percent in the past month alone.
Macro Hedge Funds Primed to Capitalise on Market Trends Amid Fragmented Global Recovery (Hedge Week)
Global macro hedge funds remain well-placed to benefit from investment themes arising from fragmented recoveries and diverging macroeconomic policies in the coming months – despite recent slim returns and allocator outflows over the summer. Macro strategies have advanced 7.82 per cent so far in 2021, according to data provider BarclayHedge, after managers posted a narrow gain of 0.19 per cent in July. In comparison, the broader Barclay Hedge Fund Index – which measures average industry performance across strategy classes – has risen almost 9 per cent year-to-date, BarclayHedge said this week.
Blue Owl Plans Funds for Co-Investments and Secondary Deals (The Wall Street Journal)
The firm’s Dyal Capital Partners V LP fund has backed four private-markets firms so far, co-president Michael Rees said. Blue Owl Capital Inc. plans to raise new funds focused on co-investments, secondary deals and lending to fund managers, as it builds on its business of providing financing to alternative-markets firms, according to co-president Michael Rees. “All of it will complement our existing minority equity investment strategy, and benefit greatly from the deep relationships we have with the private market firms across all of Blue Owl,” Mr. Rees said Tuesday during the New York firm’s first earnings call.
Why a New Era for Hedge Funds Is Dawning (Preqin)
The COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing in many parts of the world, with the now-dominant Delta variant delaying its end and the resultant supply chain bottlenecks increasing fears of inflation. Accordingly, investors will seek to further reduce portfolio risk, meaning hedge funds are expected to become increasingly crucial. At the end of 2020, 64% of managers surveyed by Preqin told us that hedge fund assets under management will increase further in 2021.
New Bitcoin Hedge Fund Produces Stellar Returns (Opalesque)
A Cayman Island-based manager launched a pure bitcoin hedge fund in October 2020 and has since produced remarkable returns, reflecting crypto hedge funds’ general returns. SAVA Investment Management was founded two years ago by Aylon Morley and Pancho Vanhees. Aylon Morley will be presenting at the next Small Managers Big Alpha webinar on 7th September. The fund: SAVA’s flagship, the SAVA Bitcoin Volatility Fund, can take long and short positions. It aims to profit from Bitcoin price movements by capturing the underlying volatility through a combination of discretionary and proprietary-based algorithmic trading.
Hedge-Fund Billionaire Ray Dalio Lays Out 4 Steps to Making Better Decisions — and Says Think Like Picasso (Business Insider)
One of the factors that tends to unite those that have reached the very top of their game is how they approach making decisions – both in the short and long term. There is a limited number of decisions that anyone can make in a day, something psychologists term “decision fatigue”.
Wednesday 8/11 Insider Buying Report: KW, GPN (Nasdaq.com)
At Kennedy-Wilson Holdings, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER William J. McMorrow bought 100,000 shares of KW, for a cost of $21.10 each, for a total investment of $2.11M. Kennedy-Wilson Holdings is trading up about 1.1% on the day Wednesday. Before this latest buy, McMorrow purchased KW on 2 other occasions during the past twelve months, for a total investment of $2.03M at an average of $16.21 per share. And at Global Payments, there was insider buying on Tuesday, by Director Connie D. McDaniel who purchased 1,150 shares for a cost of $173.48 each, for a total investment of $199,502. Global Payments is trading up about 0.2% on the day Wednesday. Bargain hunters are able to buy GPN even cheaper than McDaniel did, with the stock changing hands as low as $169.75 in trading on Wednesday — that’s 2.2% under McDaniel’s purchase price.
What Did This CEO Just Do with Personal Shares of Tandem Diabetes Care (NASDAQ: TNDM)? (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, the PRESIDENT & CEO of Tandem Diabetes Care (TNDM), John Sheridan, sold shares of TNDM for $1.61M. In addition to John Sheridan, one other TNDM executive reported Sell trades in the last month. Based on Tandem Diabetes Care’s latest earnings report for the quarter ending June 30, the company posted quarterly revenue of $172 million and quarterly net profit of $4.01 million.
