Falcone Accused of Using Company Assets in Cash Crunch (NYTimes)
An investor has accused the hedge fund billionaire Philip A. Falcone of using his publicly listed company “to bail himself out” after a reaching an $18 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the weeks after the S.E.C. settlement last August, Mr. Falcone’s hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners was confronted with a flurry of requests from investors to return their money, according to a complaint filed by a Harbinger Group shareholder, Haverhill Retirement System. …By doing so, “Falcone effectively used Company assets to bail himself out of a personal financial crisis,” the complaint said.
Brevan Howard Vet Stonberg To Winton (Finalternatives)
A former Brevan Howard Asset Management partner has joined Winton Capital Management. Stephen Stonberg was named a senior adviser at the quantitative hedge fund, Wealth Manager reports. He joins the firm from Schroders in New York, where he has served as a consultant since leaving his post as head of product management for alternatives at Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS) last year. Prior to joining the bank in 2011, Stonberg spent five years at Brevan, where he was head of its U.S. office.
John Paulson’s Journey, From Subprime Bets to Dutch Phone Calls (WSJ)
After talking up the prospects for the European telecom sector, billionaire investor John Paulson is putting his money where his mouth is. The hedge-fund manager has emerged as a shareholder in Dutch operator KPN, underscoring that investors are betting on further consolidation of Europe’s fragmented telecom market. Mr. Paulson’s investment firm, Paulson & Co., held a 4.54% stake in the Dutch company as of Monday, according to a regulatory filing published Thursday by Dutch financial-markets regulator AFM. It was the hedge fund’s first notification as a KPN shareholder.
Fink vs Icahn: Who’s right on corporate cash? (CNBC)
BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK) Chief Larry Fink thinks companies should focus more on long-term results instead of boosting dividends or buying back stock to appease short-term interests, such as those demanded by activist investors. Billionaire corporate agitator Carl Icahn thinks too many businesses are run by incompetents who waste shareholder money and need to focus on short-term improvements. Who’s right? “Both” is the short—if obvious—answer from observers. Corporate chief executive officers generally side with Fink on expanding a business for the long term.
Palladyne Accused in Suit of Laundering Money for Qaddafi (Bloomberg)
Dutch hedge fund Palladyne International Asset Management BV was sued in the U.S. for as much as $500 million by a former executive who claims the company helped Libya’s Qaddafi regime launder money in exchange for kickbacks. The Amsterdam-based firm’s main purpose was the “laundering and concealment of funds illicitly siphoned” from the regime of Muammar Qaddafi, who was deposed and killed in a 2011 revolution, Dan Friedman, the former employee, said in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in New Haven, Connecticut, on March 25. The firm denied the claims.
Not What You’d Expect: David Einhorn’s Focus on Empathy (InsidePhilanthropy)
David Einhorn is one of those Wall St. philanthropists who may fly below most people’s radar, but the Greenlight Capital founder, worth $1.2 billion, is a significant giver with an interesting, and perhaps slightly unusual philanthropic mission—“to inspire a movement of empathetic citizens who, with mutual respect and understanding, ultimately build an increasingly civil society.” We love this goal, especially coming from a hedge fund guy who hasn’t shied away from filing lawsuits to get his way, who famously beat up on Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. (NASDAQ:GMCR) after shorting its stock, and who called on Steve Ballmer to resign in 2011. There’s even a term for what happens to companies after Einhorn shorts them and starts his bad-mouthing: they get “Einhorned.”
Rough year for macro funds (CNBC)
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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