Why hedge-fund honcho Ackman loves Chicago (Crain’s Chicago Business)
Maybe Bill Ackman should stick to Chicago-area companies. The New York-based hedge-fund manager has made billions of dollar shaking up local C-suites over the past decade, even as he struggled in some high-profile battles along the way. This week’s $13.6 billion sale of Deerfield-based BEAM Inc (NYSE:BEAM) to Suntory of Japan is the latest entry in a hit parade that includes McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD), Kraft Foods Group Inc (NASDAQ:KRFT) and General Growth Properties Inc (NYSE:GGP). Mr. Ackman hasn’t shared his investing philosophy with me, but I’m guessing his local forays aren’t inspired by a love of deep-dish pizza or the arrival concourse at O’Hare International Airport. It’s more likely that Chicago happens to have had a high concentration of companies ripe for his brand of shareholder activism.
Badminton star-turned hedge fund tycoon takes a swipe at FirstGroup (The Independent)
The activist investor Tom Sandell is not a man to be brushed off lightly, as troubled trains and buses operator FirstGroup is discovering. Mr Sandell, a Swedish born New Yorker, has racked up personal wealth of more than $1bn (£610m) by buying stakes in businesses and persuading (let’s not say “strong-arming”) them to make changes that increase the value of his stake. Having watched the travails of FirstGroup for several years, aided by his knowledge of its US bus operations, Mr Sandell, 52, broke cover last month to agitate for a break-up of the business.
Bulldog Targets REITs for Shakeup After Javelin Win: Mortgages (Businessweek)
Phil Goldstein smells blood. The activist hedge fund manager is setting his sights on real estate investment trusts after winning a five-month fight with Javelin Mortgage Investment Corp (NYSE:JMI). After pressuring management to significantly repurchase stock without success, Goldstein’s Bulldog Investors turned up the heat in November, announcing it planned to nominate new board members and proposed liquidating the company. Javelin’s Vero Beach, Florida-based executives capitulated and by the end of the quarter bought back 9 percent of its shares. Since the $600 million investment firm said in August it had built a stake in Javelin, the REIT has returned 33 percent, even as similar companies, including the two largest, Annaly Capital Management, Inc. (NYSE:NLY) and American Capital Agency Corp. (NASDAQ:AGNC), declined.
Charlotte-based SPX reaches agreement with hedge fund on board seats (Charlotte Observer)
Charlotte-based SPX Corporation (NYSE:SPW), an industrial-equipment manufacturer, said it reached an agreement with Relational Investors LLC for the activist investor to nominate up to two board directors. Relational can nominate David Batchelder, who co-founded the fund with Ralph Whitworth, to the S board after the 2014 annual meeting, SPX said in a statement Tuesday. The investor can nominate a second director for election at the 2015 shareholder meeting. In exchange, Relational agreed to vote for the company’s directors, the pump maker said. Relational has amassed a 15.5 percent stake in SPX since it began buying the shares in December 2012.
Ex-Hedge Fund Boss Who Fled U.S. Gets 15 Years for Fraud (Bloomberg)
Aleksander Efrosman, the former hedge-fund manager who fled the U.S. after swindling his clients out of $5 million and gambling away most of it at a casino, was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison. Efrosman, 51, who was extradited from Poland and pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2012, was sentenced today by U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis in Brooklyn, New York, to 188 months behind bars and ordered to pay restitution of $4 million, federal prosecutors said in a statement. “Efrosman has finally been held to account for his betrayal of his clients’ trust,” U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch in Brooklyn said in the statement. The former hedge-fund manager had been “globe-trotting to escape justice.”
Fund manager says doesn’t recall why Ergen bought LightSquared debt (Reuters)
A hedge fund manager who handled debt purchases at the center of a trial over the bankruptcy of LightSquared said on Wednesday he did not recall whether DISH Network Corp (NASDAQ:DISH) Chairman Charles Ergen was buying the debt to influence the bankruptcy. Stephen Ketchum, the head of Sound Point Capital, also testified that he could not recall how badly Ergen wanted the debt of the wireless communications company, apparently contradicting an earlier deposition and drawing a reminder from the judge that he was under oath. LightSquared and its owner, Harbinger Capital Partners, accuse Ergen of improperly buying the debt as a way for Dish to take control of LightSquared’s wireless broadband rights. Ergen has said he was buying the debt for his own purposes.
Morningstar’s top fund managers (CNBC.com)
This Hedge Fund Manager Is Convinced Yahoo Is About To Buy AOL (Business Insider)
Yesterday, amid countless market transactions across the globe, there were these two events:
> In the US, a single investor bought $1 million worth of soon-to-expire AOL, Inc. (NYSE:AOL) stock options.
> In Asia, the stock price of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) Japan suddenly surged.
These two events may seem unrelated to you and me, but in Canada, an attentive hedge fund manager saw them and began to believe — or at least hope — that a major merger he’s been long waiting for is about to happen. That hedge fund manager is Eric Jackson. Jackson has been running a small hedge fund out of Toronto since 2007. It’s called Ironfire Capital. One of Ironfire’s biggest positions over these past seven years has been a stake in Yahoo. Lately, Ironfire has also taken a stake in AOL.
Deutsche Bank hedge fund spinout targets $250m (Financial News)
Philippe Azoulay, who spent six years in charge of all the quantitative aspects of Deutsche Bank AG (USA) (NYSE:DB)’s alternative and fund solution group, secured $50 million in seed funding from Deutsche Bank for his hedge fund start-up, 80 Capital, a year ago. He had been running Helium, a managed futures strategy, internally at Deutsche Bank since February 2012. Azoulay is now planning to market the fund globally and hopes to grow assets from $50 million to about $250 million in the next 12 months, according to a person close to the firm. At this point it may “soft close” to new money, the person said.
Guernsey-based hedge fund Damille Investments Ltd buy three per cent stake in Rangers (Scottish Daily Record)
A Guernsey-based hedge fund group have snapped up more than three per cent of Rangers. Finance firm Damille Investments Ltd yesterday confirmed they were behind Tuesday’s purchase of 2million shares in the Ibrox club. It’s understood they bought the holding from Richard Hughes of Zeus Capital, a key player behind Charles Green’s takeover in May 2012. After backing Green, Hughes was awarded his shares at a penny each. He announced to the Stock Exchange yesterday morning he had sold 2.2m of them for 24p each, pocketing a whopping profit of over £500,000. Then yesterday afternoon Damille officially announced that they have bought a significant slice of the club.
After prostitution arrest, $4 billion hedge fund to become family office (Portland Business Journal)
Roughly five months after the arrest of CEO Jim Bisenius in a prostitution sting, Common Sense Investment Management is closing its doors and becoming a family office, the Business Journal has learned. As a family office, it will manage Bisenius’ wealth, but largely not have any outside clients. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Founded by Bisenius in 1991, Common Sense rose to become one of the 50 biggest funds of hedge funds in the world, accumulating more than $4.2 billion in assets, according to a 2012 Business Journal investigation.
Ivaldi Hires Morgan Stanley, Sansar Alumnus for Asia Investments (Ivaldi Hires Morgan Stanley, Sansar Alumnus for Asia Investments)
Ivaldi Capital LLP, a U.K.-based multistrategy hedge-fund manager, hired former Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) strategist Rob Hart to start investing in Asian gaming, property and consumer stocks. Hart began trading in Singapore last week, William Potts, Ivaldi’s London-based chief executive officer, said in an e-mail yesterday. Hart, who spent 12 years with Morgan Stanley, left the U.S. bank in 2008 to join Singapore-based Sansar Capital Management LLC, where he helped manage a portion of investments in property, gaming and large-cap stocks in Hong Kong and China, he said. He left Sansar in March before joining Ivaldi, he said.
Financier Says He’s Guilty of Everything but a Crime (New York Times)
Defense lawyers almost always give the same advice to clients facing charges: Don’t say a word in public. That admonishment comes too late for Florian Homm. Mr. Homm, a 54-year-old German, is a prominent former hedge fund manager awaiting extradition from Italy to face security fraud charges in the United States. But in the three years since the United States government first made him a target, he has published an autobiography in English and German, given interviews to numerous publications, and appeared on German television.
