Canadian Pacific Railway expands share buyback plan (Reuters)
Canadian Pacific Railway Limited (USA) (NYSE:CP) is more than doubling the ceiling on its share repurchase program, to about 12.7 million common shares, from 5.3 million. The railway said late on Monday that it has already bought back the maximum number of shares allowed under the current plan, which kicked in on March 17, purchasing about 3 percent of its outstanding common shares. …CP’s shares have soared since now-CEO Hunter Harrison and activist hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management won a 2012 proxy battle to take control of the company and kicked off a successful campaign to make the railway more efficient.
eBay to spin off online payments giant PayPal as separate company in 2015 after pressure from hedge fund magnate Carl Icahn (DailyMail)
eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) has announced plans to turn online payments giant PayPaul into a separate company, months after being told to do so by activist investor Carl Icahn. The online marketplace said the spin-off, set for the second half of 2015, was decided because the two giant internet businesses are now ‘less advantageous’ packaged together. eBay has owned PayPal, which is growing rapidly, since 2002 when it bought out what was then a public company. PayPal now accounts for around 40 per cent of eBay’s total revenue.
A fund that’s never lost money in a calendar year – and you can buy at a discount (Telegraph)
Private investors can’t normally put money into hedge funds and many would not want to, given their complexity and high costs. But there may be good reasons to take a different view at the moment. One advantage a hedge fund has over a conventional unit or investment trust is that it can profit even when shares, bonds and other assets are all falling together. This is partly because hedge funds can “short-sell” and party because they can switch nimbly in and out of the more exotic assets such as commodities. The ability to profit when most conventional assets are falling could appeal to those who fear an imminent “correction” in the stock market.
Steve Ballmer’s Zesty New Life: $23.5 Billion And An NBA Team (Forbes)
“I love great views,” Steve Ballmer says with a grin as he takes me on a quick tour of the 40th-floor apartment he just rented in Bellevue, Wash. One set of picture windows faces the downtown Seattle skyline. Another provides a gorgeous view of Mount Rainier to the south. As Ballmer settles into a large tan sofa, I realize one outlook is missing: to the northeast. The apartment’s interior walls prevent us from looking inland toward Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)‘s giant campus, where Ballmer worked for most of his adult life.
Peltz’s BNY Mellon Campaign Underscores Custodians’ Need to Streamline (InstitutionalInvestor)
June 30 saw a $1.05 billion mystery solved: That day Nelson Peltz‘s Trian Partners revealed that it owned 2.5 percent of all outstanding shares in The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE:BK). The activist hedge fund firm had disclosed this stake in its April client letter without naming the target. True to form, $8.7 billion, New York-based Trian has yet to announce its plans for change at BNY Mellon, which tops Institutional Investor’s 2014 ranking of the World’s Largest Global Custodians for the sixth consecutive year, with $28.5 trillion in assets under custody and administration…
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