Carl Icahn, Twitter Hedge Fund, Magnetar Capital, C3:23 Capital Partners

Carl Icahn offers to buy Clorox but urges it to find a better buyer first (NY Post)
Corporate agitator Carl Icahn yesterday announced plans to woo cleaning-products giant Clorox with an unsolicited offer to buy the company for $76.50 a share, or $10.2 billion. But in a twist on the traditional corporate courtship, Icahn told the Oakland, Calif., bleach maker that he wants it to try to find a better, bigger suitor first. In a letter to Clorox CEO Donald Knaus, Icahn encouraged the company “to hold an open and friendly” sales process to see what other “superior bids” emerge. Traditionally, love-struck investors battle to keep their acquisition targets out of the arms of the competition. But as the owner of 9.4 percent of the company’s stock, Icahn stands to win either way — even more so if a rival suitor like Procter & Gamble or Unilever comes along.

The “Twitter Hedge Fund”: Harnessing the power of social media for investment direction (Opalesque)
On July 1st 2011, London based Derwent Capital Markets has launched the Derwent Absolute Return Fund which became known in the industry as the “Twitter Hedge Fund“. This highly anticipated hedge fund is Europe’s first to utilize sentiment derived from real-time social media data analysis.

Magnetar Capital AUM (AR+Alpha)
Magnetar Capital, looking to rebuild its assets, was seeking a marketing executive. The firm wouldn’t comment about whether it made a hire, but its fundraising efforts coupled with its performance (information about which could not be obtained) resulted in assets increasing by about $700 million in the past year. The firm, which managed $7.1 billion on July 1, 2010, had reached $7.5 billion six months later, according to the AR Billion Dollar Club, and Magnetar managed $7.8 billion as of May 31. Part of that increase came from the rollout of a new event-driven fund in October 2010, which was expected to launch with as much as $200 million. Magnetar’s assets hit a peak of $8.3 billion on January 1, 2008, but losses and redemptions decreased assets to $6 billion by July 2009.

C3:23’s unleveraged equity hedge fund gains from intellectual honesty (+9% YTD) (Opalesque)
C3:23 Capital Partners, LP is a fundamentally driven, value-based and unleveraged long/short equity hedge fund. This small fund, incepted in January 2010, invests in company stocks and hedges against market risk using derivatives. It has returned almost 28% since inception, and is up 9.03% YTD after gaining 2% in June – compared to the HFRI Equity Hedge (Total) Index which lost 1.20% in June and is up 1.08% YTD.