Third Point Tells United Technologies that it Opposes Raytheon Merger (Reuters)
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb said on Friday that his hedge fund Third Point LLC will vote against the planned merger of United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) and Raytheon Co (RTN.N), saying there is no “strategic rationale for this transaction.” “We have concluded that the proposed combination of United Technologies and Raytheon is ill-conceived and unlikely to create value for UTC shareholders,” Loeb wrote in a letter to the board of directors at United Technologies. Reuters saw a copy of the letter.
Feel Free to Laugh at Hedge Fund, Autonomy’s CEO Told Executive (Bloomberg)
Autonomy executives were struggling to deal with probing questions from analysts and hedge funds about the company’s finances when one official had enough. “These guys are more annoying than gum on your shoe,” Harald Collet complained in an email to his embattled boss Mike Lynch about hedge fund Lone Pine Capital.
Saba Can Nominate Slate to BlackRock Fund Boards, Delaware Court Says (The Wall Street Journal)
Saba Capital Management LP, a $1.7 billion hedge fund, will be allowed to nominate outsiders to the boards of two BlackRock Inc. closed-end funds. The decision by Delaware Chancery Court comes after Saba filed a lawsuit against the world’s largest asset manager earlier this month. In Thursday’s ruling, the court said that the BlackRock funds had overstepped their authority when they demanded extensive information about the dissidents’ backgrounds ahead of the funds’ annual meetings.
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Czech Billionaire Claims First Round in Fight With New York Fund (Bloomberg)
Czech property billionaire Radovan Vitek is claiming victory in the first round of a transatlantic legal fight with New York hedge fund Kingstown Capital Management, which alleges he engineered a $1 billion fraud scheme. A Luxembourg court became the first to weigh in this month by dismissing Kingstown’s 2015 claim against Vitek’s CPI Property Group, the largest commercial property landlord in Berlin, saying in its ruling it wasn’t clear why the company should be “condemned” with the other defendants.
‘Pain is a Great Teacher’: How Ray Dalio, the World’s Most Successful (and Mysterious) Hedge-fund Founder, Came Back from Financial Ruin (Business Insider)
Ray Dalio is one of the most influential figures in the world of finance. He started Bridgewater Associates out of his apartment in 1975, and grew it into the world’s largest hedge fund. It now has $150 billion in assets under management. Over his career, the billionaire investor has become well known for his unusual management style, rooted in what he calls “radical transparency.” At Bridgewater’s Connecticut office, employees use iPads to rate each other’s performance in real time.
New Hedge Fund Launches on the Rise (Opalesque.com)
New hedge fund launches increased to begin 2019, climbing to 136 in Q1, an increase over the 111 launches in the volatile 4Q18, according to the latest HFR Market Microstructure Report. According to the report, the 136 new launches brings the rolling 12-month launch total to 544, falling below the 561 launches from calendar year 2018 and representing the lowest total for a 12-month period since 2000. 1Q19 also represents the third consecutive quarter in which liquidations exceeded launches, reversing what had previously been a four-quarter trend of net growth in the number of funds. Fund liquidations were steady in 1Q19, narrowly declining to an estimated 213, in line with the 215 liquidations from 4Q18.
Technologists Becoming Ever-closer Partners to Hedge Funds (Hedge Week)
One of the key benefits of the platform-as-a-service model is that it gives smaller and emerging hedge funds the chance to utilise industrial-strength technology tools and applications that are commonly afforded to only the industry’s largest management groups. Siepe, a leading provider of data management and IT solutions, was founded in 2012 and has evolved to offer investment management solutions – spanning portfolio management analytics, performance attribution and data warehousing – and managed IT cloud services to empower hedge funds to scale quickly and efficiently, in lockstep with AUM growth.
Friday 6/28 Insider Buying Report: BSTZ, TGTX (Nasdaq.com)
On Tuesday, Blackrock Science and Technology Trust II (BSTZ)’s , Tony Kim, made a $540,000 purchase of BSTZ, buying 27,000 shares at a cost of $20.00 a piece. So far Kim is in the green, up about 0.4% on their purchase based on today’s trading high of $20.09. Blackrock Science and Technology Trust II is trading up about 0.1% on the day Friday. This buy marks the first one filed by Kim in the past year. And at TG Therapeutics (TGTX), there was insider buying on Wednesday, by CEO and President Michael S. Weiss who bought 50,000 shares for a cost of $7.04 each, for a trade totaling $351,750. TG Therapeutics is trading up about 0.2% on the day Friday. Weiss was up about 14.7% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with TGTX trading as high as $8.07 at last check today.
What Did This CEO Just Do with Personal Shares of Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL)? (Analyst Ratings)
Today, the CEO, Google LLC of Alphabet Inc (GOOGL), Sundar Pichai, sold shares of GOOGL for $9.45M. Following Sundar Pichai’s last GOOGL Sell transaction on September 29, 2015, the stock climbed by 454.0%. In addition to Sundar Pichai, one other GOOGL executive reported Sell trades in the last month.
Insider Buying Activity Continues to Rise (The Street – Real Money)
There have been minor technical improvements on the charts of the major equity indices of late. What’s also been notable has been a somewhat impressive rise in insider buying activity over the past few days. Is this enough to shift our outlook for the markets? Let’s take a look. On the Charts: All of the equity indices closed higher Thursday with the exception of the DJIA, which posted a minor decline. Internals were positive on the NYSE and Nasdaq as trading volumes declined from those of the prior session. Some improvements came in the form of the Dow Jones Transports closing above its near-term downtrend line, changing its trend to neutral. The S&P MidCap 400 and Value Line Arithmetic Index closed back above their 50-day moving averages. No support or resistance levels were violated.
Largest Insider Trades of the Week (Guru Focus)
Armistice Capital Master Fund bought 498,016 shares of AMAG Pharmaceuticals Inc. (NASDAQ:AMAG) for an average price of $8.87 per share on June 27. The company, which develops therapeutic compounds to treat anemia, has a market cap of $321.80 million and an enterprise value of $320.85 million. It has insider ownership of 5.51% and institutional ownership of 87.27%. Over the last 12 months, the stock has fallen 51% and is now trading 63.49% below its 52-week high and 22.02% above its 52-week low.
Former Equifax Exec Sentenced to 4 Months in Prison for Insider Trading Related to Data Breach (Market Watch)
ATLANTA – A former Equifax executive who sold stock a week and a half before the company announced a massive data breach was sentenced Thursday to serve four months in federal prison for insider trading. Jun Ying, former chief information officer of Equifax’s U.S. Information Solutions, pleaded guilty in March. His prison time is to be followed by a year of supervised release, and he was also ordered to pay about $117,000 in restitution and a $55,000 fine, the U.S. attorney’s office in Atlanta said in a news release.
Indian IT Contractor to Pay $800k in Penalties Over Insider Trading Charges (Business Standard)
An Indian IT contractor has agreed to settle insider trading charges brought against him by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by paying nearly $800,000 in penalties. Rajeshwar Gannamaneni, 36 is a citizen of India with a last known residence in Singapore. In December last year, the SEC charged Gannameneni with securities fraud based on his role in a serial insider trading scheme, and obtained a temporary restraining order freezing his United States assets.
Burner Phones, Leaks to Journalists: Regulators Probe Suspected Insider-Trading Scheme (The Wall Street Journal)
A former Citigroup Inc. employee was the alleged middleman in what authorities believe may be an insider trading scheme, according to people familiar with the matter and disclosures in a U.K. court case that wrapped up Thursday. The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority is investigating whether David Johnson, who left Citi in 2013, collected details about impending deals from a former colleague and passed them to traders, the people say. The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the allegations, the people say…
