Richard Perry and Perry Capital’s Recent Portfolio Activity

Richard Perry’s Perry Capital has a very long and successful track record of beating the market by taking less risk than the market. During the past 22 years, Perry Capital had only one losing year: 2008. Perry Partners International, Richard Perry’s flagship multi-strategy fund, lost 26.8% in 2008, gained 25.2% in 2009, and returned 16.2% in 2010. Perry Capital manages $14 Billion and has an average return of 15.4% since inception.

Richard Perry uses the same strategies described in Joel Greenblatt’s book, You Can Be a Stock Market Genius. He follows an event-driven approach and invests in companies in mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy, spinoffs or any other type of restructuring. There are a lot of hedge funds trying to generate alpha by using these strategies though. So, Richard Perry seeks out companies that are willing to work with him to make changes that unlock value.

Richard Perry initiated a $123 Million Genworth Financial (GNW) position during the first quarter. Jeffrey Altman’s Owl Creek Asset Management and Eddie Lampert’s ESL Investments had large GNW positions at the end of December.

Perry initiated a $100 Million position in BMC Software (BMC). Larry Robbins’ Glenview had a very large position in BMC. Perry Capital also initiated new positions in Smurfit Stone Container (SSCC), Sunoco (SUN), Williams Cos (WMB), BJ’s Wholesale CLub (BJ), and Iron Mountain (IRM). Smurfit Stone Container investment is a merger arbitrage play. Williams Cos is a spinoff play (Read Dan Loeb’s opinion about WMB here). Michael Lowenstein’s Kensico Capital, Michael Karsch’s Karsch Capital, and Curtis Macnguyen’s Ivory Capital had the largest holdings in WMB among the 300+ funds we follow.

The table below provides a summary of Perry’s recent activity (You can see Perry’s fourth quarter positions here):