Hedge Fund and Insider Trading News: Eddie Lampert, Elliott Management, Och-Ziff Capital, Edison International (EIX), Recall Studios Inc (BTOP), and More

Elizabeth Warren Says Sears Workers Suffered While Leadership Self-Dealed (Bloomberg)
Eddie Lampert, welcome to the 2020 campaign. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a possible Democratic presidential candidate, slammed Lampert in a letter dated Wednesday, citing the “inherent conflicts of interest’’ in the hedge fund manager’s takeover of bankrupt Sears Holdings Corp.

Hedge-Fund Rivals Fortress and Och-Ziff have Locked Horns in an Ugly Legal Battle Involving an Iconic Manhattan Property — and $1 billion is at Stake (Business Insider)
Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, an iconic New York property and the largest apartment complex in Manhattan, is at the center of dueling lawsuits involving hedge funds Fortress Investment Group and Och-Ziff Capital Management. The lawsuits are complex, but at stake is the fate of some $1 billion in fees stemming from the management of the StuyTown property and its commercial debt following its default in 2010 and eventual sale in 2015 to Blackstone Group for $5.3 billion.

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Ress Achieves Record Performance in 2018 (HedgeNordic.com)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – The beauty of hedge funds is that no asset class or anything investible is out of reach. Ress Life Investments, for instance, invests in the secondary market for U.S. life insurance policies aiming to provide returns uncorrelated to stock and bond markets or other asset classes. The fund managed by Stockholm-based alternative investment fund manager Resscapital AB, achieved its best annual gain last year since launching in April 2011, returning 9.9 percent in a year when most hedge funds struggled to avoid losses.

UPDATE 1-Elliott Ups Telecom Italia Stake as Shareholder Battle Looms (CNBC)
MILAN, Jan 31 (Reuters) – U.S. hedge fund Elliott Management has raised its stake in Telecom Italia (TIM) to 9.4 percent, a SEC filing showed on Thursday, escalating a power battle over the Italian phone group with top shareholder Vivendi. TIM has been caught up since early last year in a tug-of-war between French media group Vivendi and Elliott over how to revive Italy’s biggest telephone group, an underperforming business saddled with 25 billion euros of debt.

Where Some Of The World’s Top Hedge Funds Will Invest In 2019 (FA-Mag.com)
Macro managers, who have struggled for much of the last decade, are once again expecting a winning year. This time, they might be right. The main reason for optimism is the increased volatility in markets that began in 2018 with rising interest rates in the U.S., trade wars with China and populist politics in Italy. The turbulence helped several old macro hands including Paul Tudor Jones and Alan Howard profit after posting losses or sub-par gains.