ASA Gold and Precious Metals Ltd, NewStar Financial Inc: WS Management, Second Curve Capital Cuts Passive Stakes; Vertex One Asset Management Raises Exposure To Pacific Ethanol Inc (PEIX)

Now, we will talk about Vertex One Asset Management and Pacific Ethanol Inc (NASDAQ:PEIX).

Vertex One Asset Management was founded in 1997, and is located in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. The fund has $2.04 billion assets under management as of January 31, 2015. Vertex One Asset Management keeps its focus on misvalued companies with a catalyst in the near future. The value of the fund’s equity portfolio totaled around $987 million as of the end of September 2014.

Pacific Ethanol Inc (NASDAQ:PEIX) is engaged in producing and marketing low-carbon renewable fuels in the Western United States. At the end of last month, Pacific Ethanol Inc (NASDAQ:PEIX) announced that it agreed to acquire all of outstanding shares of Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings Inc. in a stock-for-stock merger transaction. Under the agreement, Pacific Ethanol expects to issue about 17.75 million shares of common stock upon closing in exchange for all of the issued and outstanding shares of Aventine’s common stock. Upon completion, existing Pacific Ethanol shareholders will own around 58% of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of the combined entity. The deal is expected to close during the second quarter of 2015.

Other largest shareholders of Pacific Ethanol Inc (NASDAQ:PEIX) include Malcolm Fairbairn’s Ascend Capital, which held 620,428 shares of the company as of the end of September 2014. In its latest 13F, Millennium Management, led by Israel Englander, reported ownership of 499,832 shares of the company.

Disclosure: none