Elliott Boosts Hopes for Change at South Korean Auto Giant Hyundai (Reuters)
SEOUL/NEW YORK (Reuters) – A unit of U.S. activist hedge fund Elliott Management revealed on Wednesday that it holds more than $1 billion worth of shares in key affiliates of South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Group and called for more rapid reform of the auto giant’s governance. It is Elliott’s latest challenge to South Korea’s family-run conglomerates after it forced Samsung Electronics Co Ltd (005930.KS) to increase shareholder returns in 2017, and comes amid a government campaign to boost investors’ power in a country where shareholder activism is rare. Elliott Advisors called for a “more detailed roadmap” as to how Hyundai Motor Group will “improve corporate governance, optimize balance sheets, and enhance capital returns” at Hyundai Mobis (012330.KS), Hyundai Motor (005380.KS) and Kia Motors (000270.KS).
Tiger Global Among Top Spotify Holders with $1.9 billion Stake (Economic Times)
Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management owns nearly $2 billion of Spotify Technology SA, making it one of the biggest shareholders of the music-streaming company that started trading Tuesday. The venture capital unit of New York-based Tiger Global owns 12.8 million shares, or 7.2 percent of the company, according to a March 20 filing. The business had about $700 million invested in Spotify before it went public through a direct listing, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
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Billionaire Michael Hintze is Betting on the Farm (AFR.com)
Billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Michael Hintze has made his $1.98 billion fortune making calculations and betting on the fallout from major geopolitical events. It is something the China-born, Australian-raised British resident (who still calls Australia home) seemed destined to do after he switched from engineering and the Australian Army to the world of high finance. Arguably, he’s Australia’s most successful expatriate investor but he says he always felt different. “When I was a young bloke, I used to do a lot of bushwalking. We would sit down and plan it: work out how many places you are going to, work out how long it will take, how many calories you are going to burn. You work it out and then you calculate it for three, four, five days. Not too many people did that; I wasn’t part of the scouts or anything, I just did it myself,” Sir Michael tells BOSS in an exclusive interview in Melbourne.
Hedge Funds Remain Very Bullish on Tech, Morgan Stanley Says (Bloomberg)
A survey of Morgan Stanley prime brokerage clients shows that U.S. equity long-short gross leverage on a weighted average basis is back to post-crisis highs and at the highest levels since technology, media and telecommunications growth stocks tanked in March 2014. Net exposures remain higher than the beginning of the year at 51 percent. The technology sector is still 37 percent of that total. Data shows that there has been some aggregate selling of technology stocks since the middle of March, but the magnitude has been relatively in line with other sectors.
