Warren Buffett donates $2.8 billion to charities (DigitalJournal)
Warren Buffett broke his own record by donating $2.8 billion dollars to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and family charities through selling stock. Warren Buffett donated $2.8 billion of Berkshire Hathaway Inc stock to five charities as part of his plan to give away nearly all of his wealth. Buffett donated about 21.73 million Class “B” shares of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (NYSE:BRK.A) on Monday. About 16.6 million shares, worth $2.1 billion, went to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which was founded by the famed Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) founder and focuses on education, health, and poverty alleviation.
Hedge Fund Manager Settles For 7% Return On House He Owned For Seven Months (Dealbreaker)
The Wooldon Manor estate in New York’s Southampton, which hedge-funder Scott A. Bommer bought for $75 million last year from fashion designer Vince Camuto, has sold again in two separate transactions totaling more than $80 million. The 14.5-acre parcel overlooking Lake Agawam had been listed for $98 million by the Corcoran Group’s Tim Davis and Harald Grant and Ed Petrie of Sotheby’s International Realty…. Last year Mr. Bommer, the founder of hedge fund SAB Capital, and his wife, Donya, paid a then-record $75 million to buy Wooldon Manor from Mr. Camuto…
Two Researchers Win Simons Grants in Math, Physics (IndiaWest)
Kartik Prasanna, associate professor in the mathematics department at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; and Keshav Dasgupta, associate professor in physics at McGill University, in Montréal, Québec, Canada, have been awarded research grants from the Simons Foundation. Prasanna’s award is in the field of mathematics and Dasgupta has received a grant for work in theoretical physics. “The award supports an extension of my sabbatical leave to a full year that I can spend entirely on research,” Prasanna told India-West by e-mail. …The New York-based Simons Foundation is a private foundation incorporated in 1994 by Jim and Marilyn Simons. Jim Simons is a well-known mathematician and hedge fund manager.
Tom Steyer’s Epic Green Fail (Breitbart)
Tom Steyer, the fossil-fuel-powered hedge funder, has suffered a series of setbacks in his $100 million campaign to save the planet from ‘global warming’ by destroying the U.S. economy. Earlier this year, Steyer announced that he wanted to make climate change a key issue in the 2014 US midterm elections by funding a $100 million action campaign. Half was going to come out of his own pocket – via his San-Francisco-based NextGen Climate Action group; half from fellow liberal billionaires.
Hedge Funds Bounce Back in Q2 (ai-cio)
Event-driven strategies led the hedge fund sector’s recovery in both performance and inflows terms in the second quarter of 2014, according to two reports into the asset class. Having experienced the worst start to a year since 2008 in the first quarter, hedge funds posted average returns of 2.51% between April and June, according to Preqin. While macro and emerging markets funds led the way in the second quarter, event-driven funds have topped the charts in the first half of the year with an average gain of 5.24% as a wave of global merger and acquisition activity boosted these strategies.
Icahn & Ackman are friends again (CNBC)
S.E.C. Seeks Delay in Case Against Rengan Rajaratnam (NYTimes)
Acquitted of insider trading, the former hedge fund manager Rengan Rajaratnam may now avoid a separate court battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lawyers for Mr. Rajaratnam and the S.E.C. filed a letter on Thursday requesting that the pending civil case against him be stayed for 60 days while both sides try to reach an agreement. The suit is related to the charge that Mr. Rajaratnam committed insider trading while working at the Galleon Group. The letter was filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan less than two weeks after a jury of eight women and four men acquitted Mr. Rajaratnam, 43, of that charge.
Glenview Assets Back Over $9 Billion (Finalternatives)
Glenview Capital Management has returned nearly 10% this year, helping propel the hedge fund back to its pre-crisis size. In his mid-year letter to investors, firm founder Larry Robbins reported a 9.6% first-half return. He also said the firm’s assets now stand at $9.2 billion, after having fallen to less than $3 billion in 2009 amidst losses and redemptions. Glenview had about $9 billion in assets before the financial crisis.
Druckenmiller: IBM ‘poster child’ of bad corporate growth (CNBC)
Legendary hedge fund manager Stanley Druckenmiller said IBM’s recent stock buybacks represent what’s wrong with the economic recovery—one fueled by increased debt, not organic growth. “I would say International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE:IBM) is the poster child. They literally faced a threat not too dissimilar to what Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE:KODK) and Xerox Corp (NYSE:XRX) [confronted], in terms of a new technology staring them right in the face. Instead of increasing investment to combat the threat, they’ve actually borrowed a lot of money to buy back stock,” the retired founder of Duquesne Capital Management said Wednesday at the Delivering Alpha conference presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor.
Two proxy firms give boost to activist slate at miner Cliffs (Reuters)
Casablanca Capital LP said two independent proxy advisory firms have recommended shareholders of Cliffs Natural Resources Inc (NYSE:CLF) vote in favor of the hedge fund’s bid to replace some of the members of the miner’s board of directors. Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis & Co have issued strong recommendations in support of Casablanca’s campaign for board changes, the New York-based hedge fund said in a statement late on Wednesday. ISS is the largest proxy advisor for institutional investors.
Credit Suisse: Institutions to ramp up hedge fund investments in second half of 2014 (PIOnline)
Institutions intend to be more active hedge fund investors in the second half of 2014 than they were in the first. Fully 97% of the 284 institutional asset owners surveyed in June by Credit Suisse Capital Services said they intend to invest in hedge funds in the six months ending Dec. 31, compared to 85% who responded that they would be active in the first half of the year in response to a Credit Suisse Group AG (NYSE:CS) survey at the beginning of the year.
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