I’m selling 6 times more than buying: Wilbur Ross (CNBC.com)
With the stock market recently at all-time highs, before Thursday’s sharp selloff in futures and weakness earlier this week, it’s more attractive to sell than buy, private-equity billionaire Wilbur Ross said. “On balance we’ve been a seller. We’ve sold six times as much as we’ve bought so far this year … everywhere,” the investor in distressed assets told “Squawk Box” on Thursday. Ross said stock valuations in the U.S. are high, and “with markets [near] at all-time highs, it shouldn’t be surprising that there are more things that are attractive to sell than to buy.”
Steven Cohen’s $98M One Beacon Court PH off the market (The Real Deal Magazine)
Billionaire hedge fund manager Steven Cohen’s One Beacon Court penthouse, which was most recently on the market for $98 million, is no longer listed. Cohen’s posh pad, part of his reported $300 million in real estate holdings, first hit the market for $115 million in April last year. He then chopped the penthouse asking price by 15 percent to $98 million in December. The listing disappeared from StreetEasy on Tuesday, and has been removed from the Corcoran Group’s website. It was not immediately clear whether the property has gone into contract or has simply been taken off the market.
Oil Hedging Seen in Decline With Banks Commodities’ Exit (Bloomberg)
Oil-price hedging by producers and consumers is declining as a result of stricter of regulation that’s caused banks to exit commodities markets, according to Threadneedle Asset Management Ltd. Trading of futures for delivery later this decade has diminished as some banks either leave commodities altogether or curb trading, Nicolas Robin, a fund manager at Threadneedle, said at a presentation in London yesterday. Increased regulatory oversight has caused a slump in energy trading on exchanges, Platts, a company publishing prices for commodities including oil, said the day before.
CQS’ Hintze To Join Vatican Bank Board (FINalternatives)
Pope Francis is turning to a prominent hedge fund manager to help him clean up the scandal-tarred Vatican Bank. CQS founder Michael Hintze has been named to the board of the bank, officially known as the Instituto per le Opere di Religione, one of six new lay members. The move is part of a series of changes the pope, elected last year, has made to clean up the Vatican Bank, which in recent years has faced charges of money laundering.
A Climate Activist Bags Himself (Wall Street Journal)
In “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” a Hemingway story, a man goes big game hunting who should have stayed home. Tom Steyer maybe should have stayed home. The hedge-fund king has sought to propel himself to the top circle of Democratic money men and possible future officeholders on the strength of his concern about global warming. He wants to spend $100 million this year influencing the midterm elections. All the media lately wants to talk about, though, is his thoroughly postmodern hypocrisy. The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) is the latest to investigate his former hedge fund’s investments to increase the output of Indonesian and Australian coal mines to feed China during a period when China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest carbon-dioxide emitter.
