Icahn on Inflation, Investing, and What He Misses About NYC: Q&A (Bloomberg)
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn has been a hard-charging shareholder activist for decades. At 83 years of age, he continues to battle corporate America, despite moving his headquarters from Midtown Manhattan to Florida in 2020. This year he has pushed for changes at FirstEnergy Corp. and Bausch Health Cos., settling with both companies and winning board seats for his representatives.
Billionaire Investor Bill Ackman Hopes to Close His Mega SPAC Deal in a Couple of Weeks – and Continues to Hedge Against Inflation and a Market Downturn (Business Insider)
Billionaire investor Bill Ackman hopes to close his mega-SPAC deal in the next couple of weeks, continues to hedge against inflation and a potential market downturn, and swapped out Starbucks for Domino’s Pizza in search of higher returns, he said on an earnings call this week. Ackman’s “blank-check” company, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, floated last summer with the goal of spending about $5 billion for a minority stake in a private company and taking it public. The investor revealed earlier this month that he’s been working to buy a piece of an “iconic, phenomenal, great business” since early November, and was close to sealing the deal.
Elliott Management Backs Away from Threat of GlaxoSmithKline Sale (The Times)
Elliott Management will not push for a sale of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccines and pharmaceuticals business, signalling that the US activist hedge fund is not seeking to wage an aggressive and politically contentious campaign against the British pharma giant. Elliott is also understood to not plan to push for cuts to Glaxo’s £5 billion research and development budget, and to be supportive of GSK remaining in the UK.
Pixabay/Public Domain
Amazon Deal for MGM Marks Long-Awaited Win for Some Hedge Funds (The Wall Street Journal)
Anchorage Capital Group, MGM Holdings Inc.’s largest shareholder, has made about $2 billion in paper profits with Amazon.com Inc.’s agreement to purchase the famed Hollywood studio behind James Bond. Anchorage is among a group of hedge funds that has been waiting a decade or more for a sale or public offering of the studio on the strength of its content library. They were rewarded with the deal by Amazon to buy MGM for about $8.5 billion, including about $2 billion in debt.
Hedge Fund CFOs Say Data Demands will Drive Up Ops Spend (Hedge Week)
Investor demand for data transparency is set to drive hedge fund firms’ operating costs up by more than 8 per cent over the next five years, hedge fund chief financial officers are predicting. New research by Intertrust Group – which quizzed 100 CFOs across the UK, Europe, North America and Asia, from hedge funds collectively representing a total AUM of USD7.3 billion spanning a range of strategies – indicates the growing clamour for greater transparency from investors will place increase burdens on hedge funds’ ops teams.
Hedge Funds Surpass $4 Trillion in Assets (Institutional Investor)
Hedge fund assets under management reached an all-time high of $4.146 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2021, according to a Preqin report expected to be published Wednesday. Commodity trading advisors, which saw the biggest net redemptions to in the first half of 2020, saw significant improvement in the first quarter of 2021. In fact, CTAs experienced the highest quarterly net inflows of $5.8 billion at the start of 2021. So-called niche strategies followed closely behind, ending the quarter with $5.75 billion of inflows.
