PARIS (Reuters) – French media conglomerate Vivendi (VIV.PA) and activist fund Amber Capital – the two biggest shareholders in French company Lagardere (LAGA.PA) – said they would go to court over Lagardere’s refusal to hold a special shareholders meeting. The... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s $6.2 billion foray into Japan’s five largest trading houses may signal billionaire Warren Buffett’s expectation that inflation and a falling U.S. dollar may make international equities more attractive when economie... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Brexit safeguards to stop asset managers in Britain running “shell” investment funds in the European Union to retain access to its markets should be hardwired into EU law, the bloc’s securities watchdog said on Wednesday. After Britain voted... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Investor Fredric Zaino, who spent 15 years at hedge fund Millennium Management, has launched his own firm and plans to invest in micro-, small- and mid-cap public and private companies focusing on biotech, real estate and consumer products. ... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Returning to the office will bring new challenges for banks and brokerages seeking to enforce good conduct by staff, after the bulk of their employees worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic, a financial markets industry body said o... More »
LONDON/ROME (Reuters) – Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management said it has complained to the European Commission over “illegitimate expropriation” by the Italian government of Atlantia’s motorways unit Autostrade per l’Italia. TCI, an investor in Atlantia, sa... More »
MILAN (Reuters) – Activist hedge fund TCI Fund Management, which is challenging the Italian government over the forced sale of Atlantia’s Autostrade per l’Italia (ASPI) unit, said on Friday the value of Autostrade could be between 11 and 12 billion euros. “I b... More »
BOSTON(Reuters) – Billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management is opening the $16.2 billion firm’s latest satellite location in Warsaw and moving some back office operations to lower-cost Poland. Point72, based in Stamford, Connecticut with ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Proxy advisers Institutional Shareholder Services Inc (ISS) and Glass, Lewis & Co on Thursday recommended that Toshiba Corp shareholders elect all company directors, dealing a blow to two activist investors pushing to add five newcomers. ISS... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Leaf Group said in a regulatory filing on Wednesday that one of its board members resigned and another was removed from the audit committee because he is ineligible to serve on it. The move comes just days after an investor group, which owns... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Activist investors demanded more change at European and Japanese companies in the first half of 2020 while giving U.S. companies a pass, for now, new data from investment bank Lazard show. While U.S. companies have long been activists’ favor... More »
(Reuters) – Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd, the blank check company backed by billionaire investor Bill Ackman, has increased the size of its initial public offering by $1 billion to $4 billion, the largest ever IPO by a special purpose acquisition compa... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Starting a hedge fund with more capital and scoring top first-year returns point to higher chances of survival in the often risky business, Goldman Sachs Group Inc said in research released on Friday. Goldman, which has helped launch and fin... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Cannae Holdings and Senator Investment Group, which are trying to buy property data and analytics company CoreLogic Inc, have hired a proxy solicitor, a source familiar with the matter said on Thursday. A proxy solicitor polls large sharehol... More »
(Reuters) – Property data and analytics company CoreLogic rejected an unsolicited $7 billion takeover offer from two investment firms on Tuesday, saying it expected to earn more this year and would buy back more of its stock. A consortium of Cannae Holdings In... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – More hedge funds went out of business during the first three months of 2020 than at any other time since 2015 as the coronavirus led to heavy losses and investors pulled out billions in assets. Hedge Fund Research reported on Tuesday that 30... More »
NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) – Funds that rode the market’s rally to generate the highest second-quarter returns included those invested in assets such as mining stocks, energy and technology. Global financial markets staged an impressive rebound in the second qu... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Square Capital, a unit of payments company Square Inc, said on Monday it has issued more than $820 million worth of loans to small businesses to help them weather the economic shutdown brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. Square, founde... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – William Ackman’s hedge fund is boasting double-digit gains at a time many portfolios have sunk along with the economy during the coronavirus pandemic, after the billionaire investor plowed cash into a number of companies he already owned and... More »
(Reuters) – Hedge fund Starboard Value LP is close to having eight directors elected to the board of GCP Applied Technologies Inc (GCP.N) at the chemical company’s annual meeting, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. While not all votes have been... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Investors are bearish on stocks, especially riskier assets, and expect a slower economic recovery as the risk of a second wave of infections from the novel coronavirus persists, a BofA fund manager survey showed. World stocks have bounced ba... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Sandwich maker Potbelly Corp on Monday promised to reimburse activist shareholders’ expenses with stock not cash, creating a situation that lawyers call an outlier for now but which they said could find traction in tough economic times. The ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Global hedge funds posted their biggest monthly gain in more than a decade in April when stocks rocketed higher with the help of government rescue packages designed to fuel growth stalled by the coronavirus outbreak, according to new data on... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Investors in SkyBridge Capital asked for hundreds of millions of dollars back after the fund suffered a 23% loss in March when investments made by its debt-focused hedge fund managers soured, Anthony Scaramucci wrote in a letter to clients, ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some U.S. fund managers are attempting what seems like an impossible task: making bets on the stocks and bonds of energy companies at a time when oil futures have sunk to historic lows and a swelling global glut shows no sign of letting up... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Paul Singer’s Elliott International Ltd hedge fund gained an estimated 0.1% in March and is now up 2.2% for the year through the first quarter, according to an update sent to clients on Friday and seen by Reuters. A spokesman for New York-ba... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Global currency fund managers racked up gains in the first quarter as they benefited from the extreme volatility that the coronavirus pandemic has stoked across financial markets. The BarclayHedge currency traders index was up 6.13% for th... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Glenview Capital Management, the hedge fund run by Larry Robbins, has lost roughly 30% in the first three months of 2020 as the spread of the new coronavirus hurt the healthcare facilities and hospital operators the firm has invested in. The... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Multi-strategy hedge funds – those that bet on a broad array of markets using teams of traders, leverage and centralized risk management – have flourished as stocks ended their worst three months since the 2008 financial crisis. Balyasny Ass... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire trader Steven A. Cohen is cautioning the staff of his investment firm, Point72 Asset Management, to remain cautious amid markets that have recovered slightly from coronavirus-driven lows. “Markets don’t come back in a straight li... More »
SYDNEY/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Asian shares slid on Monday as fears mounted that the global coronavirus shutdown could last for months although markets regained some lost ground late in the session with Australia posting a standout jump. U.S. and European future... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – After years of waiting and watching from afar, hedge fund Fir Tree Partners is spending $410 million from its dislocation funds on stocks, pockets of the credit market and other securities, sure the historic market sell-off made new bargains... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire investor William Ackman said a CNBC television interview he gave last week was not designed to profit from any trades, dismissing some media speculation he had purposely pushed markets lower to make money off his hedges. “Our hed... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Talks between First United Corp and Driver Management to settle a fight for board seats at the bank holding company broke down when the activist investor rejected the offer, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. “Your ‘best ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Lindblad Expeditions on Thursday said it named two independent directors backed by activist investment firm ValueAct Capital, which owns a nearly 10% stake in the adventure cruise company, to its board. New York-based Lindblad appointed Thom... More »
(Reuters) – Activist investor Starboard Value is pressuring eBay for the second time in two years and said on Thursday that it plans to install four directors on the e-commerce company’s 14-member board. The hedge fund, which last year helped fill one board se... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire investor William Ackman, who has long worried about risks posed by the coronavirus, called on the Trump administration on Wednesday to seal off the country for 30 days and said stocks would “soar” if such restrictions were impose... More »
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A hedge fund manager in Hong Kong has publicly apologised after a parody video of him licking his finger and wiping it on a hand rail in a metro car went viral, sparking anger in the city which is grappling to contain an outbreak of the n... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – A rush to sell global bonds in the past week has now rippled into the world of exchange-traded funds with some of the most actively traded seeing the most bulging gaps relative to the value of underlying holdings in years. Exchange-traded fu... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Boaz Weinstein’s main Saba Capital Management LP hedge fund reported a 33% gain in March through Friday amid coronavirus-led market turmoil, bringing its year to date gain to 67%, according to a note sent to clients seen by Reuters. Saba’s... More »
NEW YORK/BOSTON/LONDON (Reuters) – Bridgewater Associates LP, the Ray Dalio-led hedge fund giant famous for making money during the 2008 financial crisis, has posted mixed returns amid the coronavirus-led market turmoil, according to an investor with direct kn... More »
(Reuters) – William Ackman’s publicly traded hedge fund gained nearly 3% this year, though the billionaire investor warned of volatility ahead as world markets reel under the economic hit from the coronavirus epidemic. Pershing Square Holdings Ltd on Monday sa... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The hit to U.S. corporate earnings from the coronavirus epidemic is getting harder and messier to predict. Wall Street strategists have been slashing forecasts as the impact from the virus is set to be felt far further than the first quart... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Activist investor Clifton S. Robbins told clients on Friday that he is shuttering his Blue Harbour Group not because investors want their money back or because returns have lagged, but because he wants to do something different. “Our inves... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – This week’s stock market plunge on coronavirus worries has given hedge fund managers a rare opportunity to brag that they are performing better than traditional stock market funds during a time of market stress. Analyst reports on Friday s... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Some asset prices are moving together in unusual ways, an indication that investors may be preparing their portfolios for a coronavirus-led global slowdown. U.S. stocks, gold, Treasuries and the dollar have all surged in 2020, a climb that... More »
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRKa.N) on Saturday posted a 23% decrease in quarterly operating profit, while soaring prices in stock holdings such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O) enabled the conglomerate to smash its old record for full-year earni... More »
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett on Saturday called on corporate America to make their boards of directors more accountable to shareholders and less beholden to chief executive officers, perhaps by reducing their pay and requiring that they buy more stock. In his an... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Hedge fund Senator Investment Group told clients on Thursday that its founding partners are splitting up, ending one of the industry’s more profitable and durable professional marriages. Alexander Klabin will be leaving the $6.9 billion Sena... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. securities regulator is on a collision course with powerful hedge funds executives, including former White House advisor Carl Icahn and Republican mega-donor Paul Singer, over a proposal they say could reduce shareholder voting ri... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Oil drilling firm Valaris PLC reached a settlement with Luminus Management and said on Monday that it has appointed one of the hedge fund’s partners to its board. Luminus’ Adam Weitzman, an expert in offshore oil drilling who has experience ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Hedge funds that push for change at corporations stepped up their demands for asset spin-offs and sales last year, making them part of nearly half of all activist investor campaigns waged in 2019, according to data released on Wednesday. “... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investor Jeffrey Ubben, already betting there is money to be made from coaxing corporations into being better citizens, gained an ally on Tuesday when BlackRock Inc chief Laurence Fink told companies to tackle climate change or face his wr... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. private equity firm Blackstone Group Inc (BX.N) has secured $3.4 billion from investors for its first fund dedicated to investments in the life sciences sector, targeting $4.6 billion in total, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday. At its ta... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Exchange-traded funds that use leverage to offer double or triple the daily return of benchmark U.S. stock indexes rank among the 10 top-performing funds of the decade, with returns that in some cases neared 2,000%, despite warnings that t... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Activist hedge fund Marcato Capital Management, backed by Blackstone Group and billionaire William Ackman, is shutting down as assets have shriveled after two years of poor returns, sources said on Sunday. Richard McGuire, the firm’s founder... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – D.E. Shaw’s Orienteer platform, the backbone of the $50 billion investment firm’s multi-asset class offerings, posted high double-digit returns this year, the best ever in its six year lifetime. The Orienteer platform’s HV variant gained 41.... More »
(Reuters) – U.S. Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg released the names of his major fundraisers on Friday, bowing to growing pressure from rival Elizabeth Warren and U.S. journalists to be more transparent in his campaign. The list of 113 people ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire investor William Ackman’s hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management said Monday it bought shares in testing equipment company Agilent Technologies Inc, only its second new investment this year as the fund has reported a 51% r... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Turnover on some of the world’s biggest currency-trading venues has dropped as falling market volatility prompts some global banks to route more volumes onto their internal platforms, the Bank for International Settlements said in a quarterl... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Rivulet Capital, a large investor in Instructure Inc, on Thursday said it will resist the U.S. educational software company’s plan to sell itself to private equity firm Thoma Bravo for $2 billion, calling the deal too cheap and too hurried. ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Monday’s slide in U.S. stocks prompted at least one large investors to load up big on stock options that would guard against a sharper hit to stocks into the start of next year. Shortly after the market opened on Monday, an investor paid a... More »
(Reuters) – Private equity firm Silver Lake on Monday named company veterans Egon Durban and Greg Mondre to the newly formed roles of co-chief executive officers. The firm, which manages over $43 billion in combined assets, said Durban and Mondre, who were man... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citadel’s commodities investments are up at least $1 billion for the year, according to three sources familiar with the matter, helping to drive strong overall performance at one of the world’s largest hedge funds. Citadel, which manages m... More »
(Reuters) – Louis Moore Bacon, the billionaire hedge fund manager whose macroeconomic bets on currencies, interest rates and other securities earned his Moore Capital Management LP double-digit returns over 30 years, will stop investing for outside clients, ac... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Firefly Value Partners on Thursday asked Gulfport Energy for a seat on its board and criticized the “half-measures” which the U.S. gas exploration and production company is taking to improve its financial performance. On Monday, Oklahoma C... More »
(Reuters) – AT&T Inc on Monday unveiled a three-year strategic plan that included selling up to $10 billion worth of businesses next year, paying off all its debt from the purchase of Time Warner and adding two new board members, bowing to pressure from activi... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb said on Thursday his hedge fund owns a $700 million stake in Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica SA and is urging the company to “accelerate leadership transitions”. Loeb also said he was still speaking with Sony ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Money manager Jeffrey Vinik said on Wednesday he was shutting down his stock-picking hedge fund, citing unexpected difficulties raising cash for the decision to end a much-hyped but short-lived relaunch of his asset management firm. “Simply ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Elliott Management, Paul Singer’s $35 billion hedge fund, kept up its blistering pace of pushing for corporate changes during the third quarter, outspending all rivals with campaigns at AT&T and Marathon Petroleum Corp , data released on Fri... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday said it would adopt a new rule to modernize how exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are brought to the market and their regulation. The long-awaited Rule 6c-11 – or the ETF rule as it is more com... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, a born New Yorker who has run his business from the city for decades, is moving his office, more than half of his staff and himself to Florida early next year, people familiar with the plan said on Thursday. ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Record heatwaves in Europe and Asia this summer are leading fund managers to buy shares of air conditioning manufacturers, betting that the public health risks of rising temperatures will compel businesses and apartment building owners to ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investment firm VanEck and financial technology company SolidX Management LLC will sell shares in their bitcoin trust to “qualified institutional buyers,” the companies said on Tuesday, in a move aimed at further attracting institutional m... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Two reinsurance firms backed by prominent hedge funds are considered good investments as their share price performance has yet to benefit from the sector’s improved pricing outlook, according to Barron’s. Both Greenlight Capital Re and Thi... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Activist hedge fund Jana Partners on Friday disclosed a large new stake in Outback Steakhouse owner Bloomin’ Brands Inc , returning for the second time in nearly two years to push for fresh changes after reaching a settlement in 2018. Jana, ... More »
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Contract chipmaker GlobalFoundries has sued larger rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) for patent infringement, seeking to stop the defendant’s customers including Apple from importing affected products to the United States ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three names dominate the U.S. world of bond investing – Jeffrey Gundlach, Dan Ivascyn and Scott Minerd. But funds run by these star investors are lagging their respective benchmarks this year. The proximate cause for the underperformance o... More »
(Reuters) – Papa John’s International Inc (PZZA.O) is set to name Rob Lynch as the pizza chain’s new chief executive officer, Bloomberg reported late on Monday, barely 19 months after Steve Ritchie took over as top executive following a bitter board dispute. L... More »
(Reuters) – The bond market is in a “bubble,” particularly sovereign debt, Guggenheim Partners global chief investment officer Scott Minerd warned on Thursday, and he said that efforts by the Federal Reserve to head off a recession by cutting interest rates wi... More »
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators have circulated a new draft of the “Volcker Rule” that would further ease its requirements and scrap a proposed new test that had been met with fierce resistance from Wall Street, according to two people with knowledge of... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Hedge fund Third Point LLC said on Tuesday that it recently cut its investment in United Technologies Corp (UTX.N), becoming the second activist hedge fund to sell shares after the company announced a merger with Raytheon Co. (RTN.N) that th... More »
(Reuters) – U.S.-based high-yield junk bond funds posted more than $4 billion of outflows in the week ended Wednesday, the largest weekly cash withdrawals since October 2018, according to Refinitiv’s Lipper data, triggered by an escalating trade war between Ch... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Last week’s announcement of more U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods may have undermined the prospects for small-cap stocks to rebound this year, even after a brief respite from the Federal Reserve’s recent interest-rate cut. Just a day after th... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Hedge fund Hoplite Capital is returning money to outside clients after a period of sluggish returns, the firm’s founder, John Lykouretzos, told investors in a letter on Wednesday. “I have decided to close the Hoplite managed funds and return... More »
(Reuters) – U.S.-based equity funds posted more than $8.4 billion of cash withdrawals in the week ended Wednesday, following two weeks of inflows, according to Refinitiv’s Lipper. The withdrawals came ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve meeting. In the same w... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investors edged into the U.S. stock market last week, as the benchmark S&P 500 index hovered near record highs, by adding $1.1 billion into mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that hold domestic stocks, according to data released Wednes... More »
FRANKFURT/BOSTON (Reuters) – Elliott Management Corp has invested more than rivals in its push for corporate change so far this year and there has been an increasing focus among activist investors on German companies. Elliott, Paul Singer’s $35 billion hedge f... More »
(Reuters) – Activist research group Anonymous Analytics has turned its attention to the cannabis industry, initiating a buy rating on Turning Point Brands Inc (TPB.N) in a report on Wednesday. The group, which holds shares in Turning Point Brands, called it “a... More »
LONDON (Reuters) – Hedge fund Tangency Capital has raised a further $165 million to invest in the property reinsurance market, bringing its size to $265 million as the hurricane season gets under way, one of its co-founders told Reuters on Wednesday. Insured l... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investors pulled slightly more than $5 billion out of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds that hold U.S. stocks last week, ending what had been the largest rush into domestic stocks since 2016, according to data released Wednesday by th... More »
(Reuters) – Polymer maker Synthomer Plc said on Wednesday it has agreed to buy Omnova Solutions Inc for an enterprise value of $824 million in a bid to strengthen its global position. London-based Synthomer is offering Beachwood, Ohio-headquartered Omnova $10.... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A truce in the trade war between the United States and China that pushed large-cap stocks to new record highs Monday does not appear to be enough to buoy the shares of small U.S. companies that are struggling under the weight of higher tar... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A former executive of collapsed Dubai private equity firm Abraaj Capital Ltd on Friday pleaded guilty to U.S. fraud and conspiracy charges, admitting that he lied to investors about the firm’s financial health and track record. Former Abra... More »
(Reuters) – Investors’ appetite for risk-taking was on display in the latest week, as U.S.-based high-yield junk bond funds attracted more than $3 billion in the week ended Wednesday, their third consecutive week of inflows. At the top of the credit spectrum, ... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Record highs in the U.S. stock market and the anticipation of equity-friendly interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve later this year are prompting top-performing large-cap fund managers to seek out unloved stocks in hopes of further gai... More »
DUBAI (Reuters) – MSCI Inc said on Tuesday it would upgrade Kuwaiti equities to its main emerging markets index in 2020, a move that could trigger billions of dollars of inflows from passive funds. The index compiler will include the MSCI Kuwait index in the e... More »
PARIS/LONDON (Reuters) – H2O, one of French bank Natixis’ asset management businesses, has sold off some illiquid assets and removed entry fees across its funds as it tries to stem outflows of customer money. The business, which contributed about 11% of Natixi... More »
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge in Manhattan on Friday threw out the 2013 insider trading guilty plea of a former trader at SAC Capital Advisors LP, the hedge fund once run by billionaire Steven A. Cohen, saying recent changes in the law meant there were ... More »
BOSTON (Reuters) – Solel Partners is expected to start trading with more than $400 million in capital later this year, after the new hedge fund received commitments from pensions, endowments and the founders’ former boss, who ran hedge fund Highfields Capital,... More »
