Hedge Fund News: Eric Mindich, Nelson Peltz, Ken Griffin

Hedge Fund Eton Park Eyes Energy Sector, Avoided 2014’s Pitfalls (Reuters)
Eric Mindich’s $8.5 billion hedge fund, Eton Park Capital Management, is now ready to pick through the debt of beaten-up energy companies, an area it avoided last year as the price of oil tumbled. “We have completely avoided exposure to the high yield debt of energy companies and to energy-impacted emerging markets, but as the price of these bonds trade down, we are spending increasing amounts of time researching opportunities in this space,” Eton Park wrote in a letter to clients dated Jan. 16 and seen by Reuters.

PepsiCo Reaches Truce With Nelson Peltz After 2 Years of Locking Horns (New York Times)
Nearly two years of public saber-rattling between PepsiCo and the billionaire investor Nelson Peltz appeared to end on Friday, as the two announced a truce of sorts. PepsiCo, the food and beverage giant, said that it would add William R. Johnson, the former chief executive of H. J. Heinz, to its board. Mr. Johnson, who will serve as an independent director, is also an adviser to Mr. Peltz’s investment firm, Trian Fund Management. The settlement will most likely end a long-running campaign by Mr. Peltz and his team to break up PepsiCo, who have asserted that investors would benefit by spinning off the company’s beverages business from its better-performing snacks unit.

Hedge Fund Worker Gets 3 Years for Stealing from State’s Richest Man (NBC Chicago)
A brilliant, young hedge fund worker who stole trade secrets from Citadel LLC was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison by a federal judge who told him he’d been “naive.” Yihao “Ben” Pu, was just 23 when he illegally downloaded information about algorithms developed for use in high-frequency trading by Citadel, the hedge fund and financial services firm founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, Illinois’ richest man, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.