Goldman Sachs, hedge fund billionaire back $27M social impact bond (CNBC)
Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS), hedge fund billionaire John Arnold and other philanthropic partners funded the largest ever social impact bond Wednesday, a $27 million effort to prevent young men in Massachusetts from going back to prison. Social impact bonds are a hot new form of philanthropy where private donors provide money to fund social impact programs. If the tangible goals of the program are accomplished—in this case, more people stay out of prison—then government funding pays back the donors with a modest profit. The government also wins, in theory, by saving money from the related reductions in the social services it must provide.
Scout Capital to Return Investor Money as Weiss Steps Back (BusinessWeek)
Scout Capital Management LLC, the $6.7 billion hedge-fund firm run by James Crichton and Adam Weiss, is shutting after Weiss decided to step back from managing money for clients. The New York-based firm will return 95 percent of client money by April 1, the two founders said yesterday in an investor letter, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News. “We were unable to come up with an effective plan to manage the existing funds through such a significant change without imposing unnecessary risks upon you,” Crichton and Weiss, who started Scout in 1999, wrote in the letter.
Why It Seems Every Hedge Fund Wants To Go Activist On Companies These Days In One Chart (BusinessInsider)
Carl Icahn’s on his soap box about Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Paul Singer’s going after Juniper, and it seems like new activist hedge funds are popping up everywhere — some even helmed by industry veterans tweaking their strategy, like Jason Ader and Andrew Wallach. So if it seems like hedge funds are going after companies more aggressively these days, it’s because the strategy has been working, according to data compiled by eVestment. Check out the chart below, comparing hedge fund returns by strategy in 2012-2013.
Why Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) Is Under Fire From A Hedge Fund (BasicsMedia)
As one of the largest producers of iron ore in eth UNS, Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) enjoys certain advantages over its peers. However, in the last one year, it has not fared as well as its investors would have wished. It has been the second worst performing stock at the S&P 500 Index. This level of performance has prompted heavy backlash from one of the most trusted hedge funds, Casablanca Capital LP. The hedge fund is one of the biggest shareholders in CLF, and has every right to demand that the company takes certain actions that benefit it.
Yale Grad Trusts in Bank of Baghdad to Help Deliver Returns (SFGate)
For Grant Felgenhauer, a money manager whose hedge fund owns $110 million of Iraqi equities, the 15 explosions that reverberated across the country in a single day earlier this month weren’t a reason to stop buying. “The Iraq that is unfolding in Baghdad is not the Iraq you read about in the headlines,” Felgenhauer, a portfolio manager at Euphrates Iraq Fund Ltd., said in a Jan. 16 phone interview from the nation’s capital. “The opportunities offered by Iraqi equities overshadow anything else we see in the world today.”
Fir Tree Seeks JPMorgan RMBS, Plans To Sue (Finalternatives)
Hedge fund Fir Tree Partners is trying to throw a wrench in JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM)‘s plan to settle its mortgage-backed securities headache. JPMorgan struck a $4.5 billion settlement with institutional investors in November, covering 330 residential mortgage-backed securities trusts. Of those, Fir Tree has ferreted out six that it thinks it can do better with.
Super Bowl commands top dollar (CNBC)
German Finance Minister Unhappy About EU Hedge Fund Trade Rules (Finalternatives)
Hedge funds are once again facing a skeptical eye from Germany. The European Union at last released a proposal to reduce systemic risk at big banks yesterday. The regulations, similar to the Volcker rule in the U.S., would bar European banks from proprietary trading and require them to separate some riskier operations. But the bloc’s biggest economy isn’t happy with its provisions on hedge funds.
Fast growing Asia hedge fund Segantii hit by resignations (HedgeWorld)
Segantii Capital Management, one of Asia’s fastest growing hedge funds, has been hit by five resignations in the last few weeks, people with knowledge of the matter told Reuters, after the firm saw its first annual loss. Such an exodus is rare in the industry, and it marks a sharp u-turn for a fund that has grown to manage about $750 million from just $25 million in 2007, making it one of the biggest capital raising successes in the region.
US person problems: Hedge funds caught in transatlantic tug-of-war (Risk)
The laws of quantum mechanics, which state an object can exist in multiple forms and places at the same time, confused even Einstein, who said, “no reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this”. Hedge funds could say the same thing about rules governing cross-border derivatives transactions, which in their current form will require some firms to do the impossible. “The cross-border application of US regulation puts a lot of European hedge funds in the impossible position of having to simultaneously comply with two regimes that are in some respects incompatible,” says the head of risk at a hedge fund in London.
Rhode Island Terminates Third Point, Calling It Too Risky (Finalternatives)
Rhode Island’s main public pension fund has dropped Third Point following calls from the national teachers’ union. The State Investment Commission said it would redeem its investment from the New York-based activist hedge fund, in spite of the fact that it has earned a 49% return on its initial $50 million investment since it was made two years ago. Treasurer Gina Raimondo, who leads the commission, said that move was not political, but was based on the belief that Third Point had become too risky. Last year, the American Federal of Teachers issued a list of 33 investment managers featuring individuals linked to three groups the union claims are seeking to end defined-benefit plans for teachers and other public employees. One of the groups is the Manhattan Institute, where Third Point’s Dan Loeb serves as a trustee…
Hedge fund manager George Jarkesy Jr asks Washington federal court to block SEC hearing (VCPost)
A hedge fund manager who is dealing with claims from the US Securities and Exchange Commission that he has deceived investors by steering higher fees to the John Thomas Financial Inc brokerage filed a case in order to halt a hearing by the agency, Bloomberg reported. Manager George Jarkesy Jr said that if the administrative proceeding by the regulator should push through, his right to due process and equal protection as enshrined in the US Constitution would be violated. Jarkesy Jr is facing a possible $100 million fine and could even be banned from the securities industry based on the SEC complaint, the report said.
Recommended Reading:
Facebook Inc (FB) Jumps, These Hedge Funds Made A Bundle
Jeffrey Gates Boosts His Stake in International Game Technology (IGT)
William Martin’s Raging Capital Goes Activist On The Standard Register Co (SR)
