Exxon Shares Jump as Activist Investor Jeff Ubben Joins the Board (CNBC)
Exxon Mobil announced two board seat changes Monday, including activist investor and ESG proponent Jeff Ubben, in a sign that the company is confronting its uncertain future as the world moves toward cleaner energy and as investors shy away from oil stocks. Exxon said the other new board member is Mike Angelakis, chairman and chief executive officer of Atairos and former CFO of Comcast.
Goldman’s Lane Quits for Coleman’s Tiger Global in Surprise Exit (Bloomberg)
Eric Lane, the co-head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s asset-management business, is quitting the firm to join Chase Coleman’s Tiger Global Management, just a day after news that a pair of senior consumer bankers are leaving for a fintech startup. Lane is departing less than six months after taking over the firm’s newly expanded asset-management business along with Julian Salisbury, according to an internal memo seen by Bloomberg. The 25-year veteran of Goldman Sachs and a member of its most important decision-making body, will join hedge fund Tiger Global as president and chief operating officer, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Greenlight Was Up in February — But Not Enough to Erase January (Institutional Investor)
The hedge fund headed by David Einhorn remains solidly in the red for the year. David Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital rebounded in February from its rough start to the year.The value-driven hedge fund firm posted a 2.6 percent gain for the month, trimming its loss for the year to 8.8 percent, according to a person familiar with the results.
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‘Big Short’ Investor Michael Burry Slams Bitcoin as a ‘Speculative Bubble’ – and Says a Crash is Coming (Business Insider)
Bitcoin’s price has surged to unsustainable levels, and buyers have taken on dangerous amounts of debt, Michael Burry cautioned in a recent tweet. “$BTC is a speculative bubble that poses more risk than opportunity despite most of the proponents being correct in their arguments for why it is relevant at this point in history,” the investor wrote before deleting the tweet. “If you do not know how much leverage is involved in the run-up, you may not know enough to own it,” he added.
Analysis: SPACs Turn to ‘Stonks’ as Amateur Traders Take on More Risk (Reuters)
(Reuters) – For Jonny Coreson, $4 billion is worth $5 billion. The 32-year-old test prep business owner from Denver invested $100,000 in shares of veteran hedge fund manager Bill Ackman’s special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd, after they soared 25% in December with no imminent deal in sight. This valued the blank-check acquisition firm at $5 billion, when on paper it was worth only the $4 billion it had raised in an initial public offering in July.
Billionaire Hedge Fund Boss Pays Himself UK Record of £343m (The Guardian)
The billionaire hedge fund manager Sir Chris Hohn paid himself $479m last year after his Children’s Investment (TCI) fund, recorded a 66% jump in pre-tax profits to $695m. It is believed to be the highest annual amount ever paid to one person in Britain and equates to £940,000 a day. It is 9,000 times the average UK salary and 1,700 times the amount paid to the prime minister, Boris Johnson. Hohn’s huge $479m (£343m) payday is significantly higher than the previous record of £323m paid to Denise Coates, the majority shareholder of the betting company Bet365, in 2018.
