ESL Gives Sears $400 Million Lifeline (Finalternatives)
Hedge fund ESL Investments has loaned $400 million to its largest investment, Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ:SHLD), a cash infusion that will keep the struggling retailer afloat through the holiday season. Affiliates of ESL, whose founder, Edward Lampert, serves as Sears’ CEO, made the loan, which is due on Dec. 31 and is secured by 25 of Sears’ properties. The loan can be extended until the end of February. The financing was needed after Sears burned through nearly $1 billion over the past six months.
Calpers set to leave hedge funds (ManilastandardToday)
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System plans to divest the entire $4 billion that it invested with hedge funds, saying they’re too expensive and complex. The decision to eliminate 24 hedge funds and six hedge fund-of-funds, is not related to the performance of the program, interim chief investment officer Ted Eliopoulos said Monday. The board of the $298-billion pension, known as Calpers, has not decided where to invest the money after the pullout, which will take about a year, he said.
Hedge fund manager offers $1m for ‘immortality’ (HereIsTheCity)
Joon Yun, president of $1 billion health care-focused Palo Alto Investors, announced a new prize last week that will award $1 million to researchers who can “hack the code of life and cure aging.” “The current health care system is doing a remarkable job addressing the diseases of aging,” Yun, also a trained doctor, said in a statement. “However, doing so without solving the underlying process of aging produces escalating effects on health care spending. We need a paradigmatic revolution. The aim of the prize is to catalyze that revolution.”
George Soros Gives $4 Million To Ebola Treatment Facilities (JewishBusinessNews)
Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health, noticed something different about the recent Ebola breakout from others… George Soros’s Open Society Foundation donated $4 million to Farmer’s project to treat and lessen the cases of Ebola. Chris Stone, the organization’s president, said, “The coalition got us a proposal the next day, they answered all our questions the day after, and we got them the funds they needed before the week was out.”
Back Off, Hedge Fund: Olive Garden Says It Doesn’t Need Advice (BusinessWeek)
It took four days for Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) to reply to a sweeping condemnation of just about every facet of its flagship Olive Garden chain by the major shareholders at an activist hedge fund. But perhaps the delay is understandable: Starboard Value’s revival plan (pdf), which concerned itself with breadstick waste and unsalted pasta, weighed in at nearly 300 pages. Darden’s reply (pdf), at just 24 pages, argues that the fixes to the Olive Garden’s woes are already under way.
End of ‘costly’ hedge fund trend? (CNBC)
‘We’re here to stay,’ Wind Mobile CEO says after buyout deal (TheGlobeAndMail)
After months of fundraising and finally pulling the money together to buy out Wind Mobile’s foreign owner, the company’s Canadian founder says operations at the carrier will remain more or less the same for now. …Toronto-based hedge fund West Face is the biggest Canadian name to sign on to the Wind consortium and is well known for its shakeup of Maple Leaf Foods Inc. after taking an activist stake in the meat company in 2010.
Former Ackman Analyst Scott Ferguson Follows Mentor into Allergan Fight (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
As William Ackman continues to drum up support from fellow investors to pressure pharmaceuticals company Allergan, Inc. (NYSE:AGN) to call a special shareholder meeting and sell itself to Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX), one person he most likely can count on is one of his proteges. In the second quarter, Scott Ferguson’s New York-based activist hedge fund firm, Sachem Head Capital Management, took significant stakes in both stocks. At the end of June, Allergan accounted for 8.5 percent of Sachem Head’s assets, while Valeant represented 5.4 percent of…
Calpers gives up on the hedge fund dream (FT)
In the years since the financial crisis, many once-fashionable investment vehicles have fallen from grace. Fewer buyers now dabble in such instruments as synthetic collateralised debt obligations, auction rate securities or structured investment vehicles. The one big exception has been the hedge fund. Since 2009, investors have pumped $250bn of net new money into these entities, allowing the industry not only to recover from the crisis but to expand. Hedge funds now manage $2.7tn in assets, according to data from Hedge Fund Research – 40 per cent more than the $1.9tn they ran on the eve of the meltdown seven years ago.
Why Hedge Fund Paid Twice for Research That Didn’t Exist (Bloomberg)
If you’re a Hollywood screenwriter looking for a “ripped from the headlines” story on Wall Street, you could do a lot worse than this one. First you need to accept the notion that Wall Street is not a tangible geographical location, but rather an abstract concept. And this metaphorical street is in various states of opulence and decay as it winds its way through the cities, fields and meadows of our financial system.
Two Boston firms among group sanctioned by SEC (BostonGlobe)
Two Boston investment firms were among a group sanctioned by the Securities and Exchange Commission for illegally short-selling stocks and then participating in offerings of those stocks by public companies. The SEC on Tuesday named 18 hedge funds and private equity firms and one individual trader in a crackdown on a certain kind of short-selling violation — betting a stock’s value will fall in advance of share offerings by companies, which can depress the stock’s sale price. The investors then purchased shares in the subsequent offerings.
Recommended Reading:
Web.com Group Inc (WWWW): Okumus Fund Management Ups Stake To Nearly 14%
Bill Gates Raises Stake in LSE-listed BBA Aviation plc (BBA)
