Elliott Management Advocated for an Allergan Split Prior to Sale (Bloomberg)
Elliott Management Corp. had built a position in Allergan Plc and was pushing to split the company before AbbVie Inc. agreed to acquire it for $63 billion, according to people familiar with the matter. The hedge fund, run by billionaire Paul Singer, supports the AbbVie takeover, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. Elliott believes the deal is a win for Allergan shareholders and that even if it doesn’t go through, the Botox maker could fall back on its proposed plan to split up, they said.
PE Daily: Arlington Capital Raises $1.7 Billion | Joerns Healthcare Files for Bankruptcy (The Wall Street Journal)
Good day! As we draw closer to June 30 and the end of the fiscal year, the summer fundraising push has kicked into high gear. This time of year, firms typically push to wrap up funds or pin down interim closings before limited partners start to take off for summer holidays. One midmarket firm that has made a relatively quick trip through its fundraising paces is Arlington Capital Partners, which closed its latest fund at $1.7 billion after around three months in the market.
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Kyle Bass Says Wall Street Investors Should Ignore G-20 and Brace for a Fresh Round of Trump Tariffs (Market Watch)
Investors are laser-focused on this weekend’s G-20 meeting in Japan, but famed hedge-fund manager Kyle Bass predicted that nothing of importance will be achieved there, and that investors should prepare for President Donald Trump to slap tariffs on every last dollar of Chinese imports. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are expected to meet on the sidelines of the G-20 gathering, set to kick off Friday in Osaka, and investors are increasingly hopeful that it will result in an easing of U.S.-China trade tensions and the resumption of negotiations to roll back existing import duties.
Investors Pull Another USD3.78bn from Hedge Funds as Consolidation Pressure Mounts (Hedge Week)
Global investors pulled another USD3.78 billion from hedge funds in May, according to the May 2019 eVestment Hedge Fund Asset Flows Report. However, despite the overall negative industry flows, many funds have been successfully able to raise new assets in 2019. This includes funds in categories which are seeing the most negative outflows. This highlights the importance, firstly, of strong performance, but secondly the roles of marketing and sales within hedge funds, and the ability to find and exploit demand for funds in even some of the most challenging segments.
Backer of Well-Known Hedge Funds Shuts Down (The Wall Street Journal)
Adamas Partners LLC, a $1.7 billion investment firm that invested in hedge funds including Baupost Group LLC and Farallon Capital Management LLC, is shutting down. The closure comes after Adamas’s funds lost money last year, a person familiar with the matter said. Many firms in the hedge-fund industry have faced a reckoning in the last few…
Why Greyhound Bus’s Biggest Shareholder Hates British Trains (Bloomberg)
Coast Capital LP, a New York hedge fund, tried and failed on Tuesday to oust the board of directors of FirstGroup Plc, an under-performing bus and train company whose assets include the Greyhound intercity bus network. Wisely, FirstGroup’s chairman Wolfhart Hauser saw the writing on the wall and resigned anyway, but not before both sides had publicly disparaged the other’s credentials and track record in an unedifying clash of the capitalist classes.
Morgan Creek Marketing New Crypto Fund (HFAlert.com)
Morgan Creek Capital is looking to raise $250 million for its next crypto-asset fund. The Chapel Hill, N.C., firm has just begun talking to investors about Morgan Creek Blockchain Opportunities Fund 2, which would take venture capital positions in blockchain startups while also investing in liquid digital currencies. The fund-raising effort comes as the values of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets have risen sharply this year following last year’s market rout. Like Morgan Creek Blockchain Opportunities Fund 1, which held a final close in February with $40 million, Fund 2 would allocate at least 70% of its assets to venture capital plays targeting companies that employ blockchain technology — including crypto-asset exchanges, database managers, lenders and software developers.
TPG Invests in Harlem Capital, a Backer of Minority- and Women-run Companies (Opalesque.com)
The global alternative asset firm TPG made an undisclosed equity investment in New York-based Harlem Capital Partners (HCP), which invests in minority- and women-run startups, and joined Harlem’s first fund as a limited partner. In connection with its investment in the company, TPG will commit capital to HCP Fund I. The investment will provide HCP access to resources to help scale its business, enhance operating capabilities, and support its portfolio. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. Led by Managing Partners Henri Pierre-Jacques and Jarrid Tingle, HCP is committed to backing minority and women founders across industries in the United States.
Ola Rollén Acquitted from All Charges for the Second Time (PRNewswire.com)
NACKA STRAND, Sweden, June 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ — Ola Rollén, Hexagon’s President and CEO, was today acquitted for the second time from the insider trading allegations by the Norwegian economic crime authority (Økokrim). Following the prosecution’s appeal of the Oslo City Court’s unanimous acquittal (10 January 2018), the Borgarting Court of Appeal (Borgarting lagmannsrett) also found Rollén not guilty, rejecting all charges of insider trading. “I speak on behalf of the Board and everyone else who has stood united with Ola since the beginning of this ordeal that we were never in doubt about Ola’s innocence and, consequently, that the Norwegian courts would reach a firm conclusion to dismiss all allegations,” Gun Nilsson, Hexagon’s Chairman of the Board, commented.
Australian Hacker Jailed For Insider Trading (InformationSecurityBuzz.com)
Following the news that an Australian man has been sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to 11 charges including insider trading and unauthorised access to data with the intention to commit a serious offence, security experts commented below. Experts Comments: Matt Lock, Director of Sales Engineers at Varonis: “For the average cybercriminal, the prospect of breaking into a company to steal insider information without ever having to step foot in a building and ruffle through reports on employee desks is a tempting idea. An IT consultant with the time, interest and criminal inclination could easily gain the knowledge and tools needed to crack the average corporate network. It’s alarming that the perpetrator is reported to have stayed on the network for four full years…
A Director at Lattice Semicon (NASDAQ: LSCC) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Today, a Director at Lattice Semicon (LSCC), Mark Edwin Jensen, sold shares of LSCC for $57.52K. This is Jensen’s first transaction since reporting a Sell transaction on FSCT back in March 2018 In addition to Mark Edwin Jensen, 3 other LSCC executives reported Sell trades in the last month. Currently, Lattice Semicon has an average volume of 699.9K. Based on 4 analyst ratings, the analyst consensus is Strong Buy with an average price target of $16.00, reflecting a 17.2% upside. In the last 30 days, insiders have sold $101.6K worth of LSCC shares and purchased $123.1K worth of LSCC shares. The insider sentiment on Lattice Semicon has been positive according to 40 insider trades in the past three months. This sentiment is slightly higher than the average sentiment of company insiders in this sector.
Wednesday 6/26 Insider Buying Report: AKRO, VTVT (Nasdaq.com)
At Akero Therapeutics (AKRO), a filing with the SEC revealed that on Monday, Director Kevin Bitterman purchased 270,000 shares of AKRO, for a cost of $16.00 each, for a total investment of $4.32M. Bitterman was up about 15.9% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with AKRO trading as high as $18.55 at last check today. Akero Therapeutics is trading down about 0.4% on the day Wednesday. And at vTv Therapeutics (VTVT), there was insider buying on Tuesday, by Ronald O. Perelman who purchased 1,212,121 shares at a cost of $1.65 each, for a trade totaling $2M. Before this latest buy, Perelman bought VTVT on 11 other occasions during the past twelve months, for a total cost of $22.5M at an average of $1.66 per share. vTv Therapeutics is trading up about 2.6% on the day Wednesday. Bargain hunters have the opportunity to bag VTVT at a price even lower than Perelman did, with shares trading as low as $1.38 at last check today – that’s 16.4% under Perelman’s purchase price.
U.S. Prosecutors Join Multinational Crackdown on Insider Trading (Bloomberg)
U.S. prosecutors are investigating an international network of traders suspected of infiltrating banks and companies to glean confidential information on megadeals, according to people familiar with the matter. The probe by prosecutors at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is focusing on a group of stock pickers in Europe and the Middle East who have made tens of millions of dollars trading ahead of media reports about takeover talks or merger announcements by companies, according…
SEC Wins Jury Trial Against Broker Charged With Defrauding Customers (HedgeCo.Net)
(HedgeCo.Net) Jurors in Manhattan federal court have returned a verdict in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s favor against a broker who was charged in January 2017 with fraud for excessively trading customer accounts using a trading scheme that generated hefty commissions for the broker but significant losses for his customers. A second broker, also charged in the same complaint for engaging in the same fraudulent practices, admitted to his misconduct and settled with the SEC on the eve of trial. The SEC’s evidence at trial showed that the broker, Donald J. Fowler, while registered with J.D. Nicholas & Associates Inc., a now-defunct broker-dealer located in Syosset, New York, engaged in fraud when he deployed an in-and-out trading scheme that was unsuitable for his customers in order to generate large commissions for himself.
