Billionaire Daniel Och’s New Purchases: News Corp (NWSA), Express Scripts Holding Company (ESRX), Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc (CCE)

Daniel Och started Och-Ziff Capital Management almost twenty years ago, and it has become one of the largest institutional managers of alternative assets since then. A subsidiary of the firm is OZ Management, a fund that must comply with the SEC’s quarterly requirements of position disclosures. We take keen interest in these holdings, as we have found that the most popular small-cap stocks amongst hedge fund managers can handily outperform the market (see here for our double-digit return strategy). OZ Management initiated a number of new positions in Q4 2012; read below to see some of the biggest and best additions.

News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA) received a $214 million allocation from OZ this past quarter, amounting to less than a percent of the fund’s portfolio. The multimedia enterprise continues to expand its wide breadth of cable offerings and business divisions, helping to push the stock up over 50% in the last twelve months. News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA)’s most recent earnings release on Feb. 6 unveiled growth across cable and television operations, and positive sentiment for the publishing division as well. The company plans to break up into separate publishing and entertainment companies by the end of this year. Billionaire Seth Klarman of Baupost Group keeps 6.6% of his portfolio in News Corp (NASDAQ:NWSA).

Express Scripts Holding Company (NASDAQ:ESRX) is a healthcare administration and management services provider with a market cap of $48 billion. Express Scripts Holding Company (NASDAQ:ESRX) has a respectable following amongst the funds we track, with 74 funds claiming ownership. Recent analyst activity includes a downgrade to Neutral by Macquarie on the twentieth of last month. Express Scripts Holding Company (NASDAQ:ESRX) took a 24% spill after revealing a large revenue miss in its Q3 earnings report last November; this latest report for Q4 showed that earnings and revenue were much more in line with Wall Street’s expectations and displayed a bullish 74% jump in net profit. Israel Englander of Millennium Management owns over 800,000 shares of Express Scripts Holding Company (NASDAQ:ESRX) in his fund.