Billionaire Ruias Said to Weigh Delisting Units of Essar (Bloomberg)
India’s Essar Group, controlled by billionaire brothers Shashikant and Ravikant Ruia, is considering delisting all its publicly traded units and plans to sell some assets, people with knowledge of the matter said. The group plans to take Essar Ports Ltd. (ESRS), Essar Shipping Ltd. (ESL) and Essar Oil Ltd. (ESOIL) private over the next couple of years, the people said, asking not to be identified as the deliberations are confidential. The Ruias are already in the process of delisting Essar Energy Plc (ESSR) from the London Stock Exchange.
What the best hedge fund managers are buying now (MarketWatch)
At the beginning of this year we named David Tepper and Larry Robbins, along with Michael Castor of Sio Capital, among the three best hedge fund managers of 2013. Sio Capital doesn’t file 13Fs because it had an equity portfolio smaller than $100 million at the end of 2013. That’s why we will only look into Appaloosa’s and Glenview’s holdings from the latest 13F. However, we should highlight that Sio Capital returned an impressive 23% during the first four months of the year. The first stock in our list is Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C), the $142 billion market cap financial services holding company. During the first quarter, both Appaloosa Management and Glenview Capital increased their stakes in this firm.
Political Interference Clips Hedge Funds’ Desires to Trade on Mega Mergers (Wall Street Journal)
A wave of megadeal activity in Europe isn’t providing the trading opportunities many hedge funds had hoped for. U.S. drug firm Pfizer Inc. (NYSE:PFE)’s $120 billion attempt to buy U.K. rival AstraZeneca plc (ADR) (NYSE:AZN) and General Electric Company (NYSE:GE)’s proposed $17 billion purchase of French group Alstom’s power business are seen by many investors as kicking off a long-awaited boom in M&A in Europe. Traditionally hedge funds have pounced on big deals such as these, hoping to make money by correctly predicting the outcome and pocketing tiny market inefficiencies. But this time around many are less enthusiastic. One major reason is that funds are wary of growing political interference in deals, which they see as difficult to forecast.
Learn How To Invest Defensively From This Hedge Fund Pro (Investopedia)
With the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 hovering near all-time highs as investors shift toward a defensive stance, there are plenty of opportunities to bet against the stock market. But where to start? Famous short seller James Chanos, president and founder of hedge fund Kynikos Associates, continues to express his deep wariness of China, along with companies tied to high-ticket items, such as artwork, and large rollups that rely on slick accounting to gussy up their balance sheets. In interviews recently at the SkyBridge Alternatives Conference in Las Vegas, Chanos hammered home those themes, noting that a Chinese government crackdown in fraud in gambling mecca Macau could hurt gaming companies with exposure to China.
Reaping strong returns, KC hedge fund continues to grow (Kansas City Business Journal)
When Whetstone Capital LP President David Atterbury told his friends in 2010 that he was leaving New York City to open a new hedge fund in Kansas City, they thought he had gone crazy. Most people move to New York to start a hedge fund, not leave it. But Kansas City is where Atterbury and his partner, Thomas McGannon, grew up, and they knew what it had to offer from a quality-of-life and a financial services perspective.
