George Soros caught up in alleged smear campaign (LegalBrief)
A leading London consulting firm chaired by Mark Malloch-Brown, the former Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister, is being sued by one of its former clients, the Israeli businessman Beny Steinmetz, over an alleged smear campaign. According to a report in The Daily Telegraph, the name of George Soros – the man who famously broke the Bank of England – has also been caught up in the High Court battle between FTI Consulting, one of the City’s leading PR firms, for which Lord Malloch-Brown works, and a mining company. The court papers explain how BSG, founded by Steinmetz, obtained permission in March 2010 from the government of Guinea to mine half of the country’s giant Simandou iron ore deposit…
Investor Jim Rogers Says Gold Needs Correction, Isn’t Buying Yet (Businessweek)
Gold, which tumbled into a bear market last week, is in need of a correction, according to investor Jim Rogers, who said that he’s not buying the commodity yet as it hasn’t dropped enough. “This may be the correction that gold needs,” said Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings. “If it goes down enough, I will start buying it,” Rogers told reporters in Singapore today, without identifying a level.
Carl Icahn Guest Lecture At Yale University (Nasdaq)
I’ll let Carl Icahn introduce himself (from his site “The Icahn Report”): I was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens. My father was a frustrated opera singer and settled on being a cantor in Cedarhurst, Long Island. The fact that he was a dogmatic atheist did not exactly help him to get ahead in this profession and after a number of years he became a substitute teacher. My mother also worked as a schoolteacher. I attended the local public school, Far Rockaway High, later heading to Princeton University. My mother wanted me to be a doctor, so after earning an A.B. in Philosophy in 1957, I went to medical school. I quickly realized the medical field was not for me. After two years, I joined the army and soon after eagerly returned to New York to start a career on Wall Street.
Australia’s Scout Global joins IMQ in backing Romanseco fund (HedgeWeek)
Australian hedge fund seeder Scout Global Funds has joined IMQ as co-seed of Romanesco Capital Management’s systematic trading strategy, the Persistence Fund. Scout aims to identify and invest in best of breed emerging managers worldwide. The firm’s mandate is to allocate to well-researched, innovative and disciplined strategies with smaller assets under management, as these emerging managers often offer a compelling investment case. Scout’s backing of the Romanesco Fund alongside IMQ provides the new fund with another endorsement and connects it with a complementary group of investor candidates.
Highest Hedge Fund Managers Paid Well, as They Should Be (247Wallst)
Hedge fund managers are more vilified for their pay packages, by the media and the public, than public company CEOs are. To some extent, the attacks are understandable, at least on the surface. Hedge fund managers can make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, while the highest paid CEOs make only tens of millions. The difference is that hedge fund managers are generally paid by very specific performance measures. Hedge fund managers may be well paid, but the effects of poor performance can be extreme. It is not unusual for funds that have done poorly to lose a large portion of money that they manage, even to the extent that funds can be forced to close. That is the ultimate “pay for performance” penalty.
Group seeking to bring Sacramento Kings to Seattle raises offer price (Reuters)
Ahead of a meeting of NBA leaders this week to decide the fate of the Sacramento Kings, an investor group seeking to move the team to Seattle has raised its offer to $550 million, the hedge fund manager behind the offer said. The revised bid comes in advance of a National Basketball Association’s Board of Governors meeting to be held on Thursday and Friday, where a decision is expected on whether to have the team stay in Sacramento, California, or award it to Seattle by allowing the investor group to buy it from the Maloof family.
Meet The 30-Year-Old Ex-Water Ski Instructor Who Made $2 Billion Trading For Dan Och (BusinessInsider)
The Wall Street Journal’s Gregory Zuckerman has a piece about a young trader at Och-Ziff who made $2 billion last year. James Levin, 30, the head of a 14-person credit team for Daniel Och’s Och-Ziff, had one of the most profitable trades of 2012. According to the Journal, he bet $7.5 billion on structured credit debt instruments and it paid off big time. His team’s $2 billion gain, before fees, accounted for more than half of Och-Ziff’s $3.4 billion trading gains from last year, the report said. Och-Ziff employs 468 people.
LACERA on lookout for hedge fund-of-funds manager (PIOnline)
Los Angeles County Employees’ Retirement Association, Pasadena, Calif., is looking for a hedge fund-of-funds manager to run a $250 million, according to an RFI for the $42 billion pension fund. Pension fund executives launched the RFI to identify a manager that can offer a customized diversified hedge fund solution for its 3% hedge fund target allocation. Currently, LACERA has 1% of the portfolio invested in two hedge funds-of-funds; one is diversified and the other is focused on opportunistic credit strategies.
The 20 Most Inspirational Warren Buffett Quotes on Business, Investing and Life (InsiderMonkey)
Inspirational quotes are plentiful on the blogosphere. There are a few individuals, though, that readers, particularly in investing circles, should pay attention to. Let’s look at Warren Buffett‘s best quotes on business, investing, and life in general. …Buffett’s success in business has brought him the nickname the “Oracle of Omaha,” and it only takes a little bit of market-watching to see that investors follow each step Buffett makes, particularly shareholders of the illustrious Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A).
