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.
Quant Pioneer Dimensional Is Buying the Bonds That Dalio Hates (Bloomberg)
A quant pioneer with $112 billion in fixed income assets is defying doom-mongers like Ray Dalio as it places a bullish wager on interest-rate risk. Spurred by groundbreaking insights on systematic investing from its Nobel Prize-winning adviser Eugene Fama, Dimensional Fund Advisors has been extending duration in its core bond portfolios this year.
The Hedge Fund Investor Who Lost a $1 million Bet with Warren Buffett Doubts He would Make the Same Wager Today (Business Insider)
Ted Seides famously lost a $1 million bet with Warren Buffett that a basket of hedge funds would outperform the S&P 500 index over the course of a decade. The former hedge fund investor doubts he would place the same wager now. “I probably wouldn’t today for the next 10 years, not because I necessarily think it’s a losing bet, as much as I don’t think the odds are as tilted in favor of hedge funds as they were at the beginning of 2008,” Seides said in a recent RealVision interview.
Dominic Joshua’s ‘Hedge Fund’ Paid Out 30% Monthly Returns. Then the Scam Unravelled (Techabal.com)
He claimed to be investing in real estate, forex and Chanel. There was no proof. In December 2020, Michelle Adigun* transferred ₦300,000 ($750) to Brisk Capital, an investment firm she discovered on Instagram. The firm promised to pay her 30% of that capital for three consecutive months. The promise was fulfilled. The last 30% was paid alongside her initial capital. Thrilled by this, Adigun more than doubled her commitment to ₦700,000 on March 2, 2021. Same monthly promise as above. No questions asked.
Wednesday 5/26 Insider Buying Report: INVA, APO (Nasdaq.com)
At Innoviva, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Monday, Director George Bickerstaff bought 20,000 shares of INVA, for a cost of $13.21 each, for a total investment of $264,289. Bickerstaff was up about 3.1% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with INVA trading as high as $13.62 in trading on Wednesday. Innoviva is trading up about 4.4% on the day Wednesday. And at Apollo Global Management, there was insider buying on Monday, by Director A. B. Krongard who purchased 2,135 shares for a cost of $57.37 each, for a trade totaling $122,489. This buy marks the first one filed by Krongard in the past twelve months. Apollo Global Management is trading up about 0.6% on the day Wednesday. Investors can snag APO even cheaper than Krongard did, with shares changing hands as low as $56.46 at last check today — that’s 1.6% below Krongard’s purchase price.
The EVP & COO of Assurant (NYSE: AIZ) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, the EVP & COO of Assurant (AIZ), Gene Mergelmeyer, sold shares of AIZ for $6.48M. Following Gene Mergelmeyer’s last AIZ Sell transaction on August 21, 2019, the stock climbed by 39.8%. In addition to Gene Mergelmeyer, one other AIZ executive reported Sell trades in the last month. The company has a one-year high of $163.24 and a one-year low of $96.72. Currently, Assurant has an average volume of 309.50K. AIZ’s market cap is $9.64 billion and the company has a P/E ratio of 22.40.
Trean Insurance Group Inc (TIG) President and CEO Andrew O’brien Sold $8.2 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
President and CEO of Trean Insurance Group Inc, Andrew O’brien, sold 616,438 shares of TIG on 05/24/2021 at an average price of $13.3 a share. The total sale was $8.2 million.
