Hedge Fund Tipster Kinnucan Fined $6.33 Million (Finalternatives)
Adding insult to injury, a jailed expert networker has been hit with a $6.33 million bill from the Securities and Exchange Commission. John Kinnucan, the once-defiant technology analyst who pleaded guilty in 2012 to passing confidential tips to hedge funds, was ordered to pay $1.58 million in ill-gotten gains and another $4.75 million in fines. The penalty imposed by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan was the maximum; the judge noted Kinnucan’s “high degree of bad intent.” That bad intent was most clear in the months before his arrest in 2012, when he made a series of threatening and anti-Semitic phone calls to prosecutors. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison, a term he is currently serving at a California penitentiary.
Weight Watchers Hit With Investor Suit Over Slimming Stock (Law360)
Weight Watchers International, Inc. (NYSE:WTW) and hedge fund Artal Group S.A. were hit with a proposed class action in New York federal court last week accusing high-ranking executives of carrying out a flawed share buyback program to line their own pockets at the expense of investors. Vlad Kalika accuses Weight Watchers and Artal, which purchased a controlling interest in the global weight management services company in 1999, of taking on $1.5 billion in debt in order to artificially inflate the company’s share prices in 2012, just before…
George Soros pushes Obama to release strategic oil reserves to ‘ruin’ Russia (DailyCaller)
Liberal billionaire George Soros suggested that President Barack Obama release oil from the country’s strategic reserves to lower gas prices and “ruin” Russia’s energy-dependent economy. Soros told a panel in Berlin that the best way to sanction Russia for its actions in Ukraine “is in the hands of the United States,” because its oil reserves can depress the price of oil, reports Bloomberg. “The strongest deterrent is in the hands of the United States because it can release oil from the strategic oil reserve, which would then reduce the price of oil, and that would ruin the Russian economy, which lives on oil,” Soros said.
Assessing Davidson Kempner Capital Management’s 4Q13 positions (MarketreaList)
Davidson Kempner Capital Management LLC is a hedge fund manager led by president Thomas Kempner, Jr., who joined the firm in 1984. It has about $22 billion in assets under management. The company’s reportable fourth quarter portfolio totaled $2.59 billion, with 109 holdings. The fund initiated positions in Perrigo Company (NASDAQ:PRGO), Lamar Advertising Co (NASDAQ:LAMR), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), and LSI Corporation (NYSE:LSI). The fund exited positions in The WhiteWave Foods Co (NYSE:WWAV) and McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE:MCD). The firm was originally founded in May 1983 by Marvin H. Davidson as M.H. Davidson & Co. In 1990, current principals Kempner and Scott Davidson renamed the firm to Davidson Kempner Capital Management…
A Watershed Moment For Carl Icahn’s Website (DealBreaker)
For the first time in more than a month, Carl Icahn has written about something other than eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY). Kind of*. “A Watershed Moment for Stockholder Participation” celebrates the fact that institutional investors have begun to stand up for themselves, and in Icahn’s lifetime, to boot, at least in between digs at and rehashings of his case against, you guessed it, eBay. …I believe mutual funds and other big money managers owe it to their shareholders and clients to do much more than merely work “behind the scenes” at underperforming companies. Nevertheless, I am heartened by the awakening of institutional stockholders….
No Dubai property market bubble despite price rises, says investment guru Marc Faber (TheNational)
Marc Faber, the famed investor known for his often gloomy opinions on markets, has warned of asset bubbles in the US and China but does not see one yet in Dubai’s property market. Mr Faber, the author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report newsletter, said that after their huge bull run since 2009, US stocks would enter a bear market, dragging prices down by 20 or 30 per cent. In China, a huge build-up in consumer credit since the government unveiled an economic stimulus plan in 2008 would burst sooner or later, he said.
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