Aberdeen plans new Brazil fund amid effort to lure pension funds (Reuters)
Aberdeen Asset Management Plc, Europe’s largest independent money manager, expects to complete within weeks the sale of a fund investing in Brazilian stocks and government debt, two executives said on Tuesday. Assets in the fundo multimercado, as the vehicle is known in Brazil, will be split evenly between domestic stocks and government debt, using the domestic IBX stock index and the interbank lending rate CDI as benchmarks, respectively, said George Kerr, Aberdeen’s senior business development manager in Brazil. Aberdeen wants to target pension funds as the vehicle’s main client, he noted.
U.K. Activist Fund Wants Japan to Sell Tobacco Firm Stake (Wall Street Journal)
Directly appealing to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a letter, U.K. activist fund The Children’s Investment Fund urged the government to sell its entire stake in Japan Tobacco Inc. The U.K. hedge fund, which has been investing in the world’s third-biggest tobacco maker since 2011, said the stake sale would allow the government to use the funds to stimulate employment and reduce corporate taxes.
Greylock Says It’s Negotiated Ecuador Defaulted Bond Repurchase (Bloomberg)
Greylock Capital Management LLC said it helped orchestrate a deal between Ecuador and bondholders that will allow the country to buy back about 80 percent of its remaining defaulted debt. Greylock Chief Executive Officer Hans Humes, who has helped negotiate restructurings from Belize to Greece, said Ecuador agreed to better terms than the 35-cent offer it made in an original buyback in 2009. He declined to give the exact value that Ecuador will pay for the notes that were due in 2012 and 2030. The New York-based hedge fund, which oversees about $850 million, is one of the debtholders, he said yesterday.
Post Capital Raises $52M For Lastest PE Fund (FINalternatives)
New York-based private equity firm Post Capital Partners has raised $52 million for its latest fund. The firm announced the first closing of Post Capital Equity Partners III, which has a target size of $100 million. Led by Michael Pfeffer and Mitch Davidson, Post Capital works with talented operating executives to identify attractive growth businesses that can be materially improved and repositioned to drive significant returns to investors.
FirstGroup back in the black (Telegraph.co.uk)
FirstGroup, the troubled rail and bus operator which came under fire from US activist investor Sandell Asset Management, is back in the black, reporting a full-year profit of more than £58m. However shareholders have been warned it will “take some time” before the FTSE 250 group can resume paying a dividend. FirstGroup reported a statutory pre-tax profit of £58.5m for the year to March 31, a significant turnaround from a £28.9m loss previously, although revenue was 2.7pc lower at £6.7bn after the company’s US yellow school bus business suffered from extreme weather conditions in the fourth quarter.
