Activist Paul Singer Expects Positive Change at Samsung (The Wall Street Journal)
Activist investor Paul Singer doesn’t think conflict is brewing with Samsung Electronics Co., one of the latest targets in his quest to push for changes that benefit shareholders. He said he is encouraged by Samsung’s public comments that leaders of the South Korean company are receptive to the ideas recently put forward by his firm, Elliott Management Corp. “We are optimistic about that one—we think it’s a tremendous platform and a tremendous value,” Mr. Singer said Tuesday during an appearance at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive 2016 global technology conference.
Short-Seller Chanos Lays Out His Bear Case For Alibaba (CNBC)
Short-seller Jim Chanos laid out his bearish case for Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, saying Tuesday that “this is an accounting story.” Chanos, who is famous for his previous bets against once high-flying companies like Enron, explained that his fundamental problem with the company is that “you don’t see the entire operation of Alibaba.” The founder of Kynikos Associates said there’s not enough detail about the individual delivery and warehouse companies that distribute items purchased through Alibaba.
D.E. Shaw Bids for SunEdison’s TerraForm Power Yieldco (Bloomberg)
D.E. Shaw & Co., a New York hedge fund that manages about $38 billion, bid to become the operating sponsor of TerraForm Power Inc., a yieldco founded and controlled by bankrupt clean-energy giant SunEdison Inc. D.E. Shaw’s clean-energy unit D.E. Shaw Renewable Investments, or DESRI, made the bid on Oct. 21, according to a filing Tuesday. DESRI’s offer is preliminary and non-binding and didn’t include a price. D.E. Shaw proposes to oversee TerraForm Power’s wind and solar farms and reorganize the yieldco’s project portfolio “to re-establish a growth objective, including by overseeing and executing acquisitions and divestitures of projects,” according to Managing Director Bryan Martin. In a letter dated Oct. 21, Martin said his company is prepared to give TerraForm a right of first offer on a portion of existing and future DESRI projects.
Former Corvex Exec Graziano Gets Seed Money For New Hedge Fund (Reuters)
Nick Graziano, a former top executive at hedge fund Corvex Management, has obtained early-stage financing from Constellation Seeding, putting his new hedge fund on track to start trading on Nov. 1, a person familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. Greenwich, Connecticut-based Venetus Partners LP plans to invest in mid-sized North American companies, according to a presentation that Reuters saw. Like Corvex, Venetus will buy stakes in underperforming companies and push management to make improvements, using shareholder activism as a tool to boost returns. The amount of seed money Constellation invested could not be determined, and the firm was not available for comment. A Venetus spokeswoman declined to comment.
Jim Chanos On The Election And His Short Bets Against Tesla, Valeant and Alibaba (CNBC)
Short-seller Jim Chanos discussed his market views, the election and investments in an extensive interview with CNBC’s Scott Wapner on Tuesday. On heavily shorted stocks, the founder and managing partner of Kynikos Associates said: “Almost all studies I know of show that stocks with very, very high short interest relative to shares outstanding have underperformed the market.” On the election: “I think the markets basically like gridlock [with a Republican House] … the idea there is a check on a Democratic Senate [and] White House is probably a good thing for the markets. I suspect that is what we’re going to get.”
Anthony Scaramucci: Hedge Fund Impresario, Restaurateur, Memoirist, Motivational Speaker (DealBreaker)
Anthony Scaramucci—the Mooch to his friends—is an unprepossessing sort. He’s short. He’s got a Long Island accent. Steve Wynn can’t remember his name. So how did he reach the top of the hedge fund world, sort of? It took some time at the school of hard knocks (and also Harvard), as well as a conscious decision to remake himself in the image of his eventual political hero, President Donald J. Trump. “I got punished due to my insecurity and lack of self awareness,” he says—and the lessons he learned growing up in a working class family.
Highland Capital Founder Whips Out His Thesaurus To Insult Investors (DealBreaker)
Hedge fund manager James Dondero is currently fighting legal battles on two fronts: one is versus an ex-portfolio manager who say he was fired for raising questions about Dondero’s alleged plan to “use money due to outside investors…to buy a South American company that he intended to convert into a condom manufacturer” and also about Dondero’s use, allegedly, of the term “jackasses” to describe said investors. The other is versus a bunch of investors themselves, who, in addition to claiming Dondero owes them money, say he enjoys referring to them as “idiots.”
