Failed Bridgewater Associates Relocation to Stamford Cost State $16 Million (Patch)
Despite two years of courtship and promises of financial aid and tax incentives, the world’s largest hedge fund — Bridgewater Associates in Westport, has rebuffed state and local efforts to move its headquarters to Stamford. The hedge fund, founded by Greenwich resident Ray Dalio, manages $150 billion in assets from its Westport headquarters. On June 27, the firm announced it wouldn’t build a new $750 million headquarters on developer Building Land Technology’s (BLT) site in Stamford.
Nashville nonprofit uses hedge fund returns for world’s poor (Tennessean)
Karen Bruton believes capitalism can accomplish tremendous good. Not that she blindly trusts the morals of the free market, but rather, she says people can use money made from capitalistic endeavors to change the world for the better. She calls this kind of work “impact capitalism.” “I look at impact as an action item,” she said. “Do something. Don’t just think about it, do it.” That is the mindset behind her Nashville-based nonprofit, Just Hope International, which was funded nearly entirely with returns from a hedge fund, one of the most aggressive investment vehicles in today’s financial world.
Hedge Fund Pushes for American Apparel Sale (247WallSt)
The same hedge fund that forced the sale and breakup of Hostess Brands Inc. now aims to work the same trick on American Apparel Inc (NYSEMKT:APP). Monarch Alternative Capital is American Apparel’s leading bondholder and has been pushing for a sale of the company’s U.S. manufacturing plants and shipping the jobs overseas. Monarch also wants the company sold. Monarch may get what it wants, but it won’t happen soon. Last Friday, founder and ousted CEO of American Apparel, Dov Charney, borrowed enough shares in the company’s common stock to raise his stake from 27% to 43%. The lender of those shares was hedge fund Standard General, and late Wednesday Charney handed over the entire 43% of American Apparel stock to Standard General.
Coventry City owners Sisu found to have ‘seriously mismanaged’ club (TheGuardian)
Sisu, the hedge fund owners of Coventry City who moved the proud club to Northampton, have suffered total defeat in a high court judgment damning their “mismanagement” and a “rent-strike” they conducted to imperil the owners of the Ricoh Arena. In the action, Sisu made allegations that Coventry City Council and its officers behaved improperly when the council refinanced a loan to the arena operating company, ACL, in January 2013. Mr Justice Hickinbottom found that the council behaved properly throughout, but was prompted to buy out the loan partly because, in April 2012, Sisu had withheld rent due at the Ricoh in order to financially “distress” ACL and buy a half share of it “at a knockdown price”.
German hedge fund investors interested in broad range of strategies (Opalesque)
German fund allocators are looking at opportunities in a number of strategies, including corporate bonds and equities. That was the comment given by Ahmet Peker, who manages the fund of hedge funds at Deka Investment during the latest Opalesque Frankfurt Roundtable 2014. The Roundtable, sponsored by Eurex and tax and legal consultant WTS, took place in Frankfurt at the office of WTS. “This is a very difficult environment for fixed income strategies in general,” said Peker and added, “Some, like corporate bond selection strategies, can be interesting because they are market neutral.
Bienville Capital Readies an Argentina Investment Fund (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
Ralph Reynolds, Cullen Thompson and William Stimpson, the co-founders of Bienville Capital Management in New York, are going full speed ahead with plans to launch an Argentinean investment fund, despite Argentina’s highly publicized debt repayment problems. As they see it, there are investment opportunities that might not wait. On June 16 the U. S. Supreme Court decreed that Argentina must honor a lower court ruling and pay off $1.5 billion to a subsidiary of Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp., Mark Brodsky‘s Aurelius Capital Management and Thomas Kempner’s Blue Angel fund for bonds that the country defaulted on in 2001 – the investors President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and many of her fellow Argentineans call the “vultures.”
Chairs: Squawk takes a stand (CNBC)
Yellen Unsure On Hedge Fund Controls (Finalternatives)
Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen said that the central bank does not have the ability to regulate so-called “shadow banks,” including hedge funds and private equity firms. In a discussion with International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, Yellen admitted that there’s not much the Fed can do about risks posed by non-banking institutions. “You’re pointing to something that is an enormous challenge,” Yellen told Lagarde. “And we simply have to expect that when we draw regulatory boundaries and supervise intensely within them, that there is the prospect that activities will move outside those boundaries and we won’t be able to detect them. And if we can, we won’t be—we won’t have adequate regulatory tools. And that is going to be a huge challenge to which I don’t have a great answer.”
Jefferies Hires Red Alder’s Laub to Head Prime Brokerage (BusinessWeek)
Jefferies Group LLC, the investment bank owned by Leucadia National Corp. (NYSE:LUK), hired John Laub from hedge-fund firm Red Alder LLC to head its prime brokerage business. Laub is scheduled to join Jefferies in about two weeks and will replace Glen Dailey, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the appointment hasn’t been made public yet. Richard Khaleel, a spokesman for Jefferies, confirmed the appointment and declined to provide further details.
Roubini warns about negative consequences from the Argentine case (MercoPress)
In an article published on Project Syndicate, Nouriel Roubini considered “the legal saga of Argentina’s fight with holdout creditors shows that the international system for orderly sovereign-debt restructuring may be broken” and questions a recent ruling by the United States Supreme Court refusing to hear the case. The decision by the US maximum tribunal is “dangerous”, Roubini affirms, for “two reasons.”
PetSmart Surges After Being Targeted by Activist Fund (BusinessWeek)
PetSmart, Inc. (NASDAQ:PETM) shares surged after hedge fund Jana Partners LLC disclosed an activist stake in the pet-care company and urged it to undertake a strategic review, including a potential sale. Jana, the $10 billion firm run by Barry Rosenstein that’s known for pushing corporate managements to make changes, acquired about 9.9 percent of Phoenix-based PetSmart in stock and options, according to a regulatory filing today, and “expects to have discussions” with management, the board and other investors.
Poker pros not alone in ‘Big One’ tourney stake (CNBC)
On Tuesday night in Las Vegas, 23-year-old Daniel Colman won the World Series of Poker’s “Big One for One Drop” Tournament and its $15.3 million first prize. But according to the Las Vegas Sun, he’s only going to keep 10 percent of that money—or less. That’s because Colman, and most of the other poker pros in the tournament, had “backers” or investors, giving them the money for the $1 million tournament entry, or buy-in, in exchange for a cut of the winnings. …Billionaire hedge fund manager David Einhorn probably entered with a million dollars of his own money. He lasted about 45 minutes before he was knocked out.
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