Dalio, Summers Still See Risk U.S. Overheats After Fed Shift (Bloomberg)
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and billionaire investor Ray Dalio said the U.S. is headed for a period of overheating and inflation that could threaten the economic recovery, even as the Federal Reserve signaled it would step in before that happened. “It’s easy to say that the Fed should tighten, and I think that they should,” said Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund. “But I think you’ll see a very sensitive market, and a very sensitive economy because the duration of assets has gone very, very long. Just the slightest touching on those brakes has the effect of hurting markets because of where they’re priced, and also passing through to the economy.”
PE Daily: TPG Rise Seeks $5 Billion for Climate Fund | Cerberus to Buy Bank Unit | WSIB Backs New Warburg Pincus Fund (The Wall Street Journal)
Welcome to the start of another week! Late last week, the Washington State Investment Board disclosed a handful of new commitments on some new funds that have been seeking capital, including most notably a new climate-focused fund being pitched by TPG Rise, as Preeti Singh writes. Meanwhile, Chris Cumming has news of the investment board’s pledge to a new Warburg Pincus fund and our colleague Simon Clark covers Cerberus Capital Management’s plan to acquire an ailing French retail bank from HSBC Holdings PLC.
Jim Simons’ Renaissance Technologies Suffers $11 Billion of Client Withdrawals in 7 Months, Report Says (Business Insider)
Jim Simons‘ Renaissance Technologies has suffered an $11 billion outflow of client funds in seven months as investors have tired of its poor performance, Bloomberg reported, citing investor documents. Simons, a former NSA codebreaker and MIT math professor, founded RenTech in 1982 and built it into one of the world’s largest and most successful quantitative hedge funds. While the internal Medallion Fund has continued to shine, RenTech’s three public funds delivered their worst performance ever in 2020, and trailed the broader market in the first five months of this year, Bloomberg said.
Pressmaster/Shutterstock.com
The Investment Chief Overseeing George Soros’s $27 Billion Firm Says Mega-Cap Tech Stocks are Cheap compared to Late-Stage Private Firms – and Taps Them as Her Top Pick for the Next Decade (Business Insider)
The woman who manages the fortune of one of the world’s richest men said she recommends steering clear of late-stage private companies and thinks large-cap tech companies are a strong long-term investment. Dawn Fitzpatrick – the chief investment officer for Soros Fund Management, which runs billionaire George Soros‘s vast fortune – said that while March of 2020 was a time for action, June of 2021 is a time for patience. Speaking at the New York poverty-fighting charity Robin Hood’s annual conference Wednesday, Fitzpatrick said Soros is in the process of rebuilding its cash reserves after putting money to work last spring when the pandemic shut down the global economy.
Ackman’s SPAC Takes Universal Music Group Stake in $4B Deal (Fox Business)
Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman has agreed to buy 10% of Universal Music Group for about $4 billion. Ackman’s special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Pershing Square Tontine Holdings will purchase the minority stake in Universal Music Group, which represents artists including Billie Eilish and Drake, from French conglomerate Vivendi SE. The deal, which is based on an enterprise value of 35 billion euros ($41.55 billion), is expected to close no later than Sept. 15, 2021.
No Bitcoin for Volt (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Man Group’s quantitative investment unit AHL is already trading bitcoin futures, while Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion Funds have received permission to enter into bitcoin futures transactions – albeit limited to cash-settled futures contracts traded on the CME. Swedish fundamentals-based systematic Volt Diversified Alpha, however, is not planning on touching bitcoin because of a lack of fundamentals.
