KYLE BASS: My Worst Trade Was One Of The Best Things To Ever Happen To Me (BusinessInsider)
Hedge fund advisor Steven Drobny, the author of global macro books “Inside The House of Money” and “The Invisible Hands”, is coming out with another book called “The New House of Money.” Drobny has just released the first chapter available for free on his website. It’s a Q&A with Texan hedge fund manager Kyle Bass. Bass, who runs Dallas-based Hayman Capital, crushed it by shorting subprime. In his interview with Drobny, Bass discussed a gamut of topics, including how he got into the hedge fund business and how he stays grounded by spear fishing in the Bahamas.
Lampert Cuts Sears Stake Below 50% as Hedge-Fund Clients Redeem (BusinessWeek)
Edward Lampert, the hedge-fund manager who for the past eight years tried to turn around Sears Holdings Corporation (NASDAQ:SHLD), cut his stake in the retailer below 50 percent. Lampert’s ESL Investments Inc. owns 48 percent of the Hoffman Estates, Illinois-based department store chain (SHLD:US), down from 55 percent reported as recently as October, according to a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Sears has been struggling since Lampert, 51, engineered the merger of Kmart Holding Corp. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 2005.
Class-action suit seeks $50M from hedge fund’s money manager (Cincinnati)
A longtime Cincinnati money manager already targeted in several civil suits is also being sued in federal court on allegations he bilked about 200 investors out of more than $50 million. The class-action suit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in downtown Cincinnati, likely will slow the progress of the already-complex civil suits that began this summer. Like the earlier suits, the latest filing targets not only Glen Galemmo, but his wife, Kristine Galemmo; alleged business partners Edward C. Blackledge and Wiley B. Kyles; and a slew of limited liability corporations that Galemmo formed.
Why this hedge fund became the first to advertise (Fortune)
Topturn Capital has become the first hedge fund manager to create and publish a public advertisement for its services, more than two months after the SEC lifted its decades-old ban on general solicitation. The ad, first noticed by Buzzfeed, focuses on the similarities between a “top turn” surfing maneuver and the Monterey, Calif.-based firm’s proprietary investment strategy, which includes equities, commodities, fixed income and currency. To drive home the point, Topturn hired pro surfer Joe Corren to appear in a speaking role.
Hedge fund Taconic Capital co-founder Brody to retire (Reuters)
Kenneth Brody, who co-founded Taconic Capital Advisors LP after spending decades at Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE:GS), told clients on Tuesday that he plans to retire from day-to-day management at the $8.2 billion hedge fund at the end of the year. Brody, 70, co-founded the multi-strategy hedge fund in 1999 with Frank Brosens, 56, and said that he will stay on as an advisor and investor, he wrote in a letter sent to clients and seen by Reuters. Brody’s decision comes at a time a number of hedge fund founders have stepped away from their firms, raising questions among investors about the durability of the businesses and whether they can survive beyond a founder’s departure.
Activist Fund Seeks Change at the Top of Abercrombie (NYTimes)
Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (NYSE:ANF) may have lost its crown as the king of teen fashion, but a hedge fund is hoping that a change in leadership could revive the retailer’s fortunes. Engaged Capital publicly urged Abercrombie on Tuesday to replace the company’s 69-year-old chief executive, Michael S. Jeffries, after his contract expires in February. Failing that, the activist hedge fund called on the company to put itself for sale. “We are confident that an independent and objective evaluation of management’s performance would result in the conclusion that an immediate leadership change is necessary,” Glenn W. Welling, the managing member of Engaged, wrote in the letter to the company’s board.
HPQ is screaming buy, buy, buy: Cramer (CNBC)
Hedge Fund Uses Japan to Predict International Equity Growth (TheStreet)
Equipped with a couple of engineering degrees, Robert Page started his career at Lehman Brothers’ interest rate derivative option desk. In the early 90s, the bank offered him the whole Yen derivative book to trade; he moved to Japan and built the book into a large business with 12 currencies. “It was a very interesting time to begin trading in Asia,” he says in a recent Opalesque TV interview. “I arrived in Japan the week that the Japanese Government Bonds market began its collapse of 1994. In my first week of trading, I learned that the market absolutely collapses for unforeseen events; that was my first trial by fire, the first time running a large amount of risk.”
Pershing Square has double-digit gains on year (HedgeWorld)
Hedge fund manager William Ackman posted fresh gains in November even as his big short position on Herbalife Ltd. (NYSE:HLF) lost more money, leaving his fund with double-digit returns for the year. Ackman’s flagship Pershing Square L.P. fund earned 1.4 percent after fees last month, leaving the $12 billion fund up 10 percent for the year to date, according to an investor update sent to clients and seen by Reuters. The gains were nowhere near as strong as October’s blowout when Pershing Square climbed 7.9 percent. Ackman’s returns last month also lagged the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, which gained 2.8 percent.
Elliott Wants Major Influence Over Buyout Target Celesio (Law360)
Activist hedge fund Elliott Management LP has built up a sizable minority stake in German drug distributor Celesio AG over several weeks and plans to leverage its holding to exert major strategic influence over the company, Celesio confirmed in a Tuesday filing. The announcement adds some clarity to Elliott’s rationale for a series of stock buys that started in late October, less than a week after Celesio rival McKesson Corporation (NYSE:MCK) lobbed a €6.1 billion ($8.2 billion) offer at the company, igniting rumors that Elliott could muck…
Billionaire Soros sold us bill of goods (LasVegasSun)
That was quite a bete noire postulated in the letter “Office of president not being respected.” The real traitor to America is billionaire George Soros, he of the endless deep-liberal pocket monies, who masterminded the election of the “genius” we now have in the White House. Soros handed the American people a gift-packaged glib-tongued person and bankrolled Barack Obama into the presidency with subterfuge, as we are now learning, media manipulation and smokescreens.
Zuckerberg to Koons’s Egg Power $3 Billion Miami Art Fair (Bloomberg)
Art Basel Miami Beach, the largest U.S. art fair, will offer more than $3 billion of mostly postwar and contemporary works when it opens to a select group of collectors today, a 20 percent increase from two years ago. Held at the Miami Beach Convention Center, the fair’s 12th edition features 258 galleries from 31 countries, with pieces by top market performers including Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso and Jeff Koons. Lavish dinners, boozy parties and at least 20 satellite art fairs, including Scope, Pulse, Untitled, the New Art Dealers Alliance and Art Miami, take place concurrently with the main event, which drew 50,000 visitors in 2012.
Recommended Reading:
Mario Gabelli Raises Exposure to Belo Corp (BLC)
Orbimed Advisors Discloses 33.5% stake in Relypsa Inc (RLYP)
Jeffrey Gates, Gates Capital Add To Position in Darling International Inc. (DAR)
