Leucadia Doubles Investment in Falcone’s Harbinger Amid Gain (SFGate)
Richard Handler’s Leucadia National Corp. (NYSE:LUK) more than doubled its bet on Philip Falcone’s Harbinger Group Inc. after the value of an earlier investment jumped. Leucadia agreed to buy 23 million preferred securities from Falcone’s hedge funds for $253 million, the firms said yesterday. That adds to Leucadia’s purchase last year of common stock that jumped more than 50 percent in value to $244 million by yesterday’s close. Harbinger Group owns businesses from consumer goods to insurance. Falcone, 51, is focused on building his publicly traded Harbinger Group after reaching a settlement with U.S. regulators that bars him from the hedge-fund industry…
Dow Chemical raises asset sale target by $1.5 billion – $2 billion (Reuters)
The Dow Chemical Company (NYSE:DOW) said it aimed to raise up to $6 billion from asset sales, $1.5 billion to $2.0 billion more than its earlier target, to focus on electronics, agriculture and packaging. Dow Chemical is under pressure from hedge fund titan Daniel Loeb‘s Third Point LLC to spin off its lucrative but slow-growing petrochemical unit and focus on specialty materials, but the company is reluctant to split the two businesses. The company has repeatedly defended its strategy of using its commoditized raw materials businesses to keep costs down at its high-growth specialty chemicals businesses.
Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services acquires hedge fund administrator Meridian Fund Services Group (PIOnline)
Mitsubishi UFJ Fund Services on Wednesday announced it acquired hedge fund administrator Meridian Fund Services Group, pending regulatory approval. Terms were not disclosed, said Alistair Scott, Mitsubishi UFJ spokesman. Meridian was owned both by management and outside investors, Mr. Scott said. He did not know what percentage of the firm had been owned by management. Meridian has $14 billion in assets under administration. The acquisition raises Mitsubishi UFJ’s overall AUA to about $165 billion, including $93 billion administered for hedge funds.
Activist Hedge Funds Are Making Friends (BloombergView)
This DealBook article about the new alliances between activist hedge funds and long-only institutional shareholders is full of enjoyable oddities; here is my favorite part: …Also good are T. Rowe Price’s and BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE:BLK)‘s vague non-denials that they issue R.F.A.’s, and a proxy solicitor’s statement that “Institutional investors want to share the sick children in their portfolio with someone who can help make them better.” Lazard’s delightfully titled “head of corporate preparedness” is quoted saying, “This is the biggest shift in the battle for corporate control since private equity was invented in the 1980s,” and it’s worth thinking about it in the larger context of the separation of ownership and control.1
Och-Ziff May Have Been A Little Too Friendly With Gaddafi’s Sovereign Wealth Fund (DealBreaker)
Since it was restating its financials anyway after the SEC made it consolidate some CLOs, Och-Ziff Capital Management thought it might mention that the SEC (and Justice Dept.) is also interested in some bribery that may or may not have gone on before the Libyan dictator’s end. Och-Ziff began receiving subpoenas from the Securities and Exchange Commission and requests for information from the Justice Department in 2011, the filing said. The hedge-fund operator said the investigation “concerns an investment by a foreign sovereign wealth fund in some of the Och-Ziff funds in 2007 and investments by some of the funds, both directly and indirectly, in a number of companies in Africa.”
Sony Pictures To Cut 216 Jobs In California (BusinessInsider)
Sony Pictures Entertainment plans to cut 216 jobs in California and has filed with the state Employment Development Department, according to a person familiar with the matter. …Under pressure from hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb to improve profitability at its studio, in November Sony hired consultancy Bain & Co to identify more than $US100 million in cost cuts through layoffs and other means.
Hayman’s Bass on General Motors probe (CNBC)
Georgia won’t rush down the aisle with her millionaire beau (Herald)
FHM model Georgia Salpa may be happily engaged to her millionaire boyfriend, but she is in no rush down the aisle. British hedge fund manager Joe Penna went down on bended knee last December and popped the question to the 28-year-old Killiney native. But although her fellow models Rosanna Davison and Glenda Gilson are getting hitched this summer, Georgia won’t be following suit. The Kim Kardashian lookalike has told pals that she has “no plans” put in place yet and would favour a long engagement.
Billionaire Marc Lasry on the Hook for $200M (JewishVoiceNY)
Marc Lasry is not planning to go away quietly after losing more than $200 million in the bankrupt sandwich chain Quiznos. The New York Post has reported that the hedge fund billionaire’s Avenue Capital and Wes Edens’ Fortress Investment Group, co-owners of the chain, have claimed in court papers that the sandwich business failed “because they were scammed in 2012 by the company’s former owners.” Rick Schaden and his father, Richard, are said to have used two forecasting models for their 2012 restructuring of the company. However, they only revealed the “model that contained inaccurate and inflated data,” the current co-owners claimed in a bankruptcy court filing, the New York Post reported on Tuesday, March 18.
Icahn Calls For Ebay To Spin Off 20% Of PayPal In An IPO (Forbes)
Carl Icahn fired off another letter to eBay Inc (NASDAQ:EBAY) -1.09% shareholders today, purposing that it spin off 20% of its PayPal division in a public offering. Icahn held back the verbal punches he’s thrown at eBay CEO John Donahoe and board members Marc Andreessen and Scott Cook in previous letters, and instead laid out reasons why he believes the 20% spin off would be good for eBay, PayPal and shareholders. Some ideas where spot on, others might have missed the mark. First, here’s Icahn’s arguments for an eBay / PayPal spin off:
Marathon Asset ‘Hates High Yield,’ COO Andrew Rabinowitz Says (Bloomberg)
Marathon Asset Management LP, a hedge-fund operator that manages about $10.5 billion, is betting prices will fall in the high-yield, high-risk bond market because interest rates and defaults probably will rise. “We hate high-yield — we’re actually short high-yield,” Andrew Rabinowitz, Marathon’s chief operating officer, said today on a panel at the Absolute Return Symposium 2014 in New York today. “It’s trading at dangerous levels.”
Wall Street Veteran Stephen Weiss Preps New Fund of Funds (InstitutionalInvestorsAlpha)
Veteran Wall Streeter Stephen Weiss, best known these days for his regular appearances on CNBC, is launching a new fund of hedge funds. Weiss is raising money for Short Hills Investment Partners L.P. and an offshore version, according to a regulatory filing. It is said to be a fund of funds that will specialize in long-short managers, according to a person with knowledge of the fund. A very well-known hedge fund manager is one of the fund’s primary investors, according…
Recommended Reading:
Coliseum Capital Initiates 6.2% Position in Medifast Inc (MED)
Relational Investors Sell Some Shares of SPX Corporation (SPW)
Cove Street Capital Ups Stake in Signature Group Holdings, Inc (SGGH)
