Healthequity Inc (HQY), Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY), Shire Plc (ADR) (SHP) Among Top Picks of Award Winning Napier Park Global Capital

Napier Park Global Capital, founded and managed by Jim O’Brien and Jonathan Dorfman, was recently awarded the title of 2015 Hedge Fund Manager of the Year by Risk magazine. The fund, which had approximately $6.4 billion in assets under management (AUM) as of December 30, was originally an internal hedge fund unit of Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) before being spun off into an independent firm in 2013.

“We could not be more pleased to have been recognized by Risk for our accomplishments over the past year,” states Jim O’Brien, senior managing partner of Napier Park Global Capital. “Our core strength is our ability to understand complex, highly structured credit-intensive assets and to then correctly match those assets with the appropriate fund structure and financing. The structure of our funds can enable us, at times, to increase risk when many funds are selling.”

Once primarily a credit fund that has since moved into the equity market, Napier Park won particular praise for a skillful macro hedge they executed in late August which set them up perfectly for a credit default swap buying spree in October, when spreads widened.

Credit aside, there’s also been a good deal of activity in Napier Park’s equity portfolio within the past few months. As you can see from when we profiled Napier Park’s top picks four months ago, there were some major changes in the intervening quarter, up until their third quarter 13F filing on September 30.

Only Ally Financial Inc (NYSE:ALLY) remained in their top three picks, though Napier Park did sell off slightly more than 100,000 of the 834,900 shares they purchased in the second quarter, when they opened their position on the financial services company (which had its IPO during in April, 2014). Ally Financial Inc (NYSE:ALLY) has not been a successful investment thus far, as they have slipped 13% since their IPO, and nearly 13% this week alone after it was announced that General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) would stop using Ally for discounted leases on new cars, replacing them with an in-house financing division.

Other shareholders of Ally Financial Inc (NYSE:ALLY), as of the end of September, include Dan Loeb’s Third Point, which is one of the largest shareholder with 41.91 million shares, Stephen Feinberg‘s Cerberus Capital Management, and James Dinan’s York Capital Management.