Hedge Fund News: Jim Chanos, Paul Singer & Esl Investments

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TCI Abandons Coal India Investment (Finalternatives)
The Children’s Investment Fund Management has given up a more than two-year battle with the Indian government. The activist hedge fund has sold its entire stake in Coal India. TCI began exiting the investment, which once made it the largest private shareholder in the monopoly, which is nearly 90% owned by the Indian government, last April. It sold its last shares earlier this month. TCI first invested in Coal India in 2010, the year it sold shares publicly. It then began agitating for change, accusing the government of improper interference with the company and violations of treaties with the U.K. and Cyprus. In 2012, TCI sued the Indian government over those issues.

Hedge fund pressures Family Dollar on Dollar General bid (BizJournals)
A hedge fund led by billionaire Paul Singer is pressuring North Carolina-based Family Dollar to consider a $9.1 billion takeover bid from Goodlettsville-based Dollar General Corp. (NYSE:DG). Singer’s fund, Elliott Management, announced Friday that it had put forth seven candidates for Family Dollar Stores, Inc. (NYSE:FDO)‘s board, The New York Times reports. Elliott Management claims to own 4.9 percent of Family Dollar. In a letter to Family Dollar’s board, Mark Levine, a senior portfolio manager at Elliott, wrote, ” Unfortunately, the actions of the board to date in connection with the strategic review process fail to sufficiently demonstrate that the board has had the best interests of its shareholders in mind.”

Billionaire hedge fund managers back whiz kids’ charity (TheStar)
When it came to figuring out how to get some of North America’s biggest billionaire hedge fund managers to support their unusual fundraiser for The Hospital for Sick Children, two Bay Street whiz kids discovered the best bet was simply picking up the phone. “We’d had a number of failed initiatives,” says Jeff Gallant, the 25-year-old co-founder of Capitalize for Kids, a charity that aims to raise $1 million for The Hospital for Sick Children through a two-day investment conference. In the end, make a phone call, asking for the executive assistant and delivering their “elevator pitch” got the ball rolling, Gallant said during a late Friday afternoon interview in the boardroom at Alignvest Capital Management, where he works as an analyst. Once one of the investment gurus agreed to participate, the rest followed suit.

Pension funds eye reducing hedge fund investments (eFinancialNews)
In San Francisco, the chairman of that city’s pension fund has put on hold a vote to invest 15% of its assets in hedge funds. In Austin, Texas, officers responsible for the retirement savings of city police officers are discussing whether to withdraw all of their hedge fund investments. In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a prominent state official asked the systems that manage money for teachers and other public workers to reconsider the $7.6 billion parked in such investments. “We need to be talking about this,” Pennsylvania Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said in an interview.

Hedge fund exit requests drop to nine-month low in Oct (Reuters)
Investor requests to pull money out from hedge funds dropped to a nine-month low in October, new data released on Monday showed. The SS&C GlobeOp Forward Redemption Indicator, a snapshot of hedge fund clients giving notice to withdraw cash expressed as a percentage of assets under administration, fell to 3.12 percent in October from 3.25 percent in September. “October’s forward redemptions decreased slightly from September, but remain in line with historical averages,” said Bill Stone, chairman and chief executive of SS&C Technologies.

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