Former BoE Policymaker Vlieghe Joins Hedge Fund Element Capital (Reuters)
LONDON, Sept 20 (Reuters) – Former Bank of England policymaker Gertjan Vlieghe has agreed to join major U.S. hedge fund Element Capital as its chief economist, a representative for the company said on Monday. Vlieghe served for six years on the BoE’s Monetary Policy Committee before stepping down at the end of August when his second three-year term as an external member expired. Prior to joining the MPC he had been a partner at hedge fund Brevan Howard.
‘Big Short’ Investor Michael Burry Sounds the Alarm on Stocks, Blasts the Fed, and Calls for a Big Tech Boycott (Business Insider)
Michael Burry warned the US stock market is in a precarious position, accused the Federal Reserve of misleading investors, and swore off America’s largest technology companies in a flurry of tweets at the weekend. The contrarian investor is best known for his billion-dollar bet against the US housing bubble – which was chronicled in the book and the movie “The Big Short” – and for inadvertently laying the groundwork for the GameStop short squeeze and the broader meme-stock boom.
Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Raises $2.5 Billion Fund (Bloomberg)
Steven Mnuchin has started his next act with a multibillion-dollar fund for private equity investments. Mnuchin, a movie producer and financier before being tapped as U.S. Treasury secretary for the Trump administration, has raised about $2.5 billion at his firm Liberty Strategic Capital, according to people familiar with the matter. Most of the money is from sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, said the people, who asked not to be named because the details are private.
Ginkgo Bioworks’ SPAC Success Is Good News for These Hedge Funds (Institutional Investor)
The biotech company had a strong first day of trading and is so far bucking the trend of underperformance for recently merged special purpose acquisition companies. Good news for the slumbering SPAC market. Shares of Ginkgo Bioworks got off to a strong start on the company’s first day of trading, rising more than 6 percent to close at $12.15 a share after the company completed its merger with the special purpose acquisition company Soaring Eagle Acquisition Corp.
Allianz Asset Management Head Jacqueline Hunt in Talks to Depart (The Wall Street Journal)
Allianz SE’s top asset-management executive is in talks to leave the company, according to people familiar with the matter, as it navigates a Justice Department probe into a group of investment funds that suffered steep losses last year. Jacqueline Hunt joined Allianz in 2016 to oversee its asset management and U.S. life insurance businesses, which include investment arms Allianz Global Investors and Pacific Investment Management Co. Her contract was renewed in 2019 and was due to expire in 2022. Instead, Ms. Hunt will likely leave earlier than planned, the people said.
Crypto Exchange Binance Faces a US Insider-Trading Probe into Whether it Exploited Its Customer Order Data, Report Says (Business Insider)
Binance is being probed over possible insider trading and market manipulation by US regulators, who are looking into whether the crypto exchange exploited its access to data on millions of transactions, Bloomberg reported. Officials are examining whether the company or its employees profited from this access, including by trading on customer orders before executing them, Bloomberg said Friday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Eat Just Raises $97 Million More to Fund Cultured Meat Production (Bloomberg)
Eat Just Inc., the San Francisco-based maker of plant-based egg products, raised $97 million in new funding to advance the company’s work on cultured meat. The investment, which was part of a round announced in May that raised $170 million, came from new groups including Resilience Reserve, a venture capital fund, and existing backers like hedge fund UBS O’Connor and Graphene Ventures. This brings the round to $267 million, making it the largest ever for cultivated meat, which backers say will help to meet the world’s rising demand for animal products in a more humane and environmentally friendly way.
Monday 9/20 Insider Buying Report: OSCR, SLGC (Nasdaq.com)
At Oscar Health, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Thursday, Chief Executive Officer Mario Schlosser bought 57,300 shares of OSCR, at a cost of $17.53 each, for a total investment of $1.00M. Investors have the opportunity to buy OSCR at a price even lower than Schlosser did, with the stock changing hands as low as $16.77 at last check today — that’s 4.3% under Schlosser’s purchase price. Oscar Health is trading off about 0.5% on the day Monday. And on Wednesday, Director Anne H. Margulies bought $229,200 worth of SomaLogic, buying 20,000 shares at a cost of $11.46 a piece. SomaLogic Inc is trading down about 2% on the day Monday.
California Resources Insider Sold Over $34.35 Million In Company Stock (Benzinga)
Steven Tananbaum, 10% Owner at California Resources (NYSE:CRC), made a large insider sell on September 15, according to a new SEC filing. What Happened: A Form 4 filing from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday showed that Tananbaum sold 791,813 shares of California Resources at prices ranging from $42.26 to $43.75. The total transaction amounted to $34,354,735. California Resources shares are trading down 2.01% at $42.13 at the time of this writing on Monday morning.
A Director at Aemetis (NASDAQ: AMTX) is Selling Shares (Analyst Ratings)
Yesterday, a Director at Aemetis (AMTX), Francis Barton, sold shares of AMTX for $1.35M. Following Francis Barton’s last AMTX Sell transaction on January 10, 2013, the stock climbed by 6.5%. This is Barton’s first transaction since reporting a Buy transaction on INVT back in October 2016. Based on Aemetis’ latest earnings report for the quarter ending June 30, the company posted quarterly revenue of $54.88 million and GAAP net loss of -$10,557,000. In comparison, last year the company earned revenue of $47.82 million and had a net profit of $2.19 million.
SEC charges Florida man for insider trading of Mylan stock (Tampa Bay Times)
NEW YORK — A former executive at pharmaceutical company Mylan has pleaded guilty to insider trading in the company’s securities, the Justice Department said Friday. The department said Dayakar Mallu, 51, of Orlando, worked with another executive at Mylan to make trades between 2017 and 2019 based on nonpublic information about Mylan. The information ranged from corporate earnings, to new drug approvals, to Mylan’s eventual merger with a division of Pfizer.
