ValueAct takes $1 bln stake in 21st Century Fox (Reuters)
Hedge fund ValueAct Capital LLC has taken a $1 billion stake in Rupert Murdoch-controlled film and TV company Twenty-First Century Fox Inc (NASDAQ:FOX), CNBC reported. ValueAct built its position when Fox was seeking to buy Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), CNBC’s David Faber said. (reut.rs/1lOUuJ9) Fox withdrew its $80 billion bid to buy Time Warner last week after being rebuffed by the owner of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros studios. Faber said ValueAct Chief Executive Jeffrey Ubben had told him he “loves” Fox’s standalone plan.
Cokal receives extra funds for BBM project (WorldCoal)
Cokal has secured US$5.65 million of funding to progress its BBM project in Central Kalimantan, the company said in a statement. The funds will be provided by Platinum Partners, a New York based hedge fund, and brings its total investment in the project to US$9.15 million. Platinum agreed to the latest loan “due to the significant progress being made with both the BBM project and the finalisation of the BBM financing package,” Cokal said in its statement. The new funds will be used to progress the detailed engineering and final design work on the project and to complete the preparation work necessary to start construction onsite.
Carl Icahn Is Having Another Good Year Thanks To Apple And A Huge Second Quarter (Forbes)
With his brand of activist investing as popular as ever, Carl Icahn has consistently been beating the stock market indexes and the vast majority of richly-paid hedge fund managers over the last five calendar years. He is on his way to doing it again in 2014. After a tough first quarter that saw Icahn’s investment fund, which he uses to bet on stocks with his own money and money belonging to his publicly-traded Icahn Enterprises LP (NASDAQ:IEP), fall by 0.4%, Icahn rebounded in a big way in the spring. Icahn’s investment fund returned 10.7% in the second quarter, according to comments SungHwan Cho, Icahn Enterprises’ chief financial officer, recently made on a conference call.
Ex-Microsoft Hedge-Fund Hopeful Gets Two Years For Insider Trading (Finalternatives)
Brian Jorgenson hoped that the more than $400,000 he and a friend earned illegally trading Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares would pave the way to hedge-fund success. Instead, he’ll pay for the profits with two years of his life. Jorgenson and a friend used information he received as an employee of Microsoft’s treasury department to make the trades, which they hoped would be part of an investment track-record that would allow them to launch their own hedge fund. The scam ran from early 2012 through the end of last year, when Jorgenson and his friend, Sean Stokke, were arrested. Jorgenson pleaded guilty earlier this year.
Lehman Is the Gift That Keeps On Giving for King Street (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
King Street Capital Management, the New York-based multistrategy hedge fund firm founded by O. Francis Biondi Jr. and Brian Higgins, reported solid second-quarter results that added to its first-quarter gains, thanks in part to continued wins from positions in Lehman Brothers Holdings. The firm, launched in 1995, gained 3.5 percent in the three-month period ending in June and is now up 6.2 percent in the first half, according to a letter from a fund-of-funds firm with an investment in King Street. Biondi and Higgins, who met in the late 1980s at First Boston Corp., qualified for Alpha’s annual Rich List in 2014 for earning $325 million apiece in 2013. They managed about $19.8 billion at the beginning of the year, close…
Hedge Fund Returns To Fannie, Freddie Bonds (Finalternatives)
Months after unloading its holdings of agency mortgage bonds, 400 Capital Management is jumping back in, taking advantage of a recent sell-off. 400 chief investment officer Chris Hentemann said the firm began buying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s new risk-sharing bonds last week. The move came after the bonds dropped about 10% over the past three months. “We’re dipping our toes back in,” Hentemann told The Wall Street Journal. “It was a pretty significant move, and leaves pricing more closely aligned with the credit risk we are buying.”
McKinsey Report: Alternative Investments growing fast (CNBC)
Achica sells stake to hedge fund giant Lansdowne Partners (Retail-Week)
Documents filed at Companies House, which detail Lansdowne’s investment, show that the company is considering a stock market listing at some point in the future, the Telegraph reported. An IPO is understood to be some way off but is a possible exit route for Achica, whose early investors include technology-focused private equity firm Balderton. Achica is a ‘flash sales’ site which offers members discounts on furniture, homewares and kitchenware. It recently promoted former Tesco Direct boss Steve Robinson to chief executive while co-founder Will Cooper moved up to chairman.
Brevan Howard attempts to halt co-founder fund launch plan (CityWire)
A founder partner of hedge fund Brevan Howard is seeking to a court order to overturn a non-compete clause preventing him from launching a rival strategy, the Financial Times has reported. Jersey court documents reportedly seen by the FT show that Christopher Rokos, who stepped down from the $37 billion group in 2012, is challenging the terms of the five-year order. The filing argues that Rokos’ ability as a ‘star trader’ would ‘atrophy’ if he complied with the unusually-long time frame stipulated by the contact. Non-compete clauses more typically specific 12-18 month terms, at most.
Viking Manager In Rent Dispute (Finalternatives)
A hedge fund manager is demanding most of his money back from his former landlord, who, in a made-for-the-tabloids twist, is a former model. Viking Global Investors’ Paul Enright paid more than $1 million to rent a Manhattan townhouse from Brenda Schad—better known in some quarters as “Miss Wonderbra.” But Enright complained that he and his family were never given access to the basement of the East 19th Street house, and that the backyard was rendered useless by a rat infestation.
Marc Faber’s 20% Correction that Never Came (InsiderMonkey)
Marc Faber, is famously called Dr. Doom due to his never ending prophecies that something or the other is going to witness a correction. So, another prophecy by him that the U.S. Stock markets will collapse by 20% was nothing new when he said it on CNBC, exactly a year ago. The interesting observation though that one makes when rewinding to the views that he held then, is the logic. Mr. Faber is not someone who plainly utters verbiage when asked about the reasoning behind his predictions, he offers a logical explanation behind them. The problem is that even though his reasoning can be deemed right at times, the outcomes mostly don’t match up to it.
Cotton, sugar lead hedge fund pessmism on ags (AgriMoney)
Hedge funds cut their bullish positioning in agricultural commodities again as they turned net short in cotton and sugar for the first time in months, more than offsetting a more upbeat take on grains. Managed money, a proxy for speculators, cut its net long position in futures and options in the top 13 US-traded agricultural commodities, from cotton to cattle, by more than 3,000 contracts in the week to last Tuesday, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regulator.
SEC: Brokerage Firm Worked With A Hedge Fund To Hide $45 Million (HedgeCo)
Hedge fund manager Nikolai Battoo is again under investigation, this time for his inappropriate business dealings with Bahamas-based brokerage firm Alliance Investment Management Limited. The SEC alleges that Julian R. Brown and his firm Alliance Investment Management Limited (AIM) purported to be the “custodian” for assets under the management of Nikolai Battoo. The SEC obtained a court-ordered freeze over Battoo’s assets after charging him in 2012 with defrauding investors around the world by hiding major losses while falsely boasting that their investments were performing remarkably during the financial crisis.
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