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.
Dov Charney voluntarily steps down from board (CNBC.com)
Harbinger sues Dish, Ergen for $1.5 billion over LightSquared (Reuters)
Harbinger Capital Partners has sued DISH Network Corp (NASDAQ:DISH) and its chairman, Charles Ergen, for at least $1.5 billion, accusing them of trying to strip the hedge fund of its control of bankrupt wireless company LightSquared. The lawsuit, filed in a Colorado federal court on Tuesday, said Ergen had engaged in fraud and violated a federal anti-racketeering law. LightSquared LP filed for bankruptcy protection in 2012. Its Chapter 11 case has been marred by a long-running battle between Ergen, who became LightSquared’s largest creditor during the bankruptcy, and Phil Falcone‘s Harbinger, which spent billions of dollars building the company’s wireless network.
City Diary: Hedge fund joins the dots between Blinkx and Gowex attacks (Telegraph.co.uk)
Diary spots an interesting link between the short-selling attacks on Blinkx, sparked by a report by Harvard professor Ben Edelman, and Let’s Gowex, sparked by a report by Gotham City Research. A unifying thread running through the two recent high-profile bear raids is Valiant Capital, a San Francisco-based hedge fund, which has profited from both companies’ dwindling fortunes. Last December, Valiant Capital started building up its short position in Blinkx, the one-time video search darling, to a peak of 2.11pc by December 20, shortly before Professor Edelman’s Darker Side of Blinkx bombshell on January 30 wiped 40pc off the company’s share price.
Fortress Said to Hire Ex-RBS Trader Siegel for Mortgages (Bloomberg)
Fortress Investment Group LLC (FIG) hired Adam Siegel, a former trader at Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc (ADR) (NYSE:RBS), to expand its mortgage business. Siegel started this week as a managing director at $62.5 billion Fortress, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named because the information is private. He was formerly co-head of mortgage and U.S. corporate trading at Edinburgh-based RBS’s securities unit, after joining in 2008 from Bear Stearns Cos., according to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records.
Psst! Pimco has a really hot investing TIP for you (CNBC.com)
Though inflation pressures remain fairly muted for now, Pimco believes it’s time for investors to prepare for what’s ahead. The bond giant, which manages just under $2 trillion in assets, advised clients this week to begin putting money into Treasury Inflation Protected Securities as a hedge for price pressures ahead. Known more commonly as TIPS, the bonds in a fairly quiet manner have been the fourth-best performing asset class in fixed income for 2014. TIPS have returned 6.4 percent so far, barely trailing the 6.6 percent for municipals.
Janus Vet Rollins To Manage 361 Capital Global Macro Fund (FINalternatives)
Denver-based liquid alternatives firm 361 Capital has launched a global macro fund to be managed by Janus Capital vet Blaine Rollins. Rollins, who joined 361 Capital in 2011, was executive vice president at Janus, where he served as portfolio manager of the Janus Fund, Janus Balanced Fund, Janus Equity Income Fund, Janus Aspen Growth Portfolio, Janus Advisor Large Cap Growth Fund and the Janus Triton Fund. He was with Janus for a total of 16 years and then became an independent investor for nearly five years.
