Vivendi Sells a 7.1% Stake of UMG to Pershing Square for $2.8 Billion (Reuters)
PARIS, Aug 10 (Reuters) – Billionaire hedge fund manager William Ackman on Tuesday bought 7.1% of Universal Music Group from French conglomerate Vivendi (VIV.PA) and pledged to keep buying after his original plan to acquire a 10% stake in the record label for his blank-check company collapsed. Vivendi said the transaction was valued at $2.8 billion, based on an enterprise value of 35 billion euros ($41.01 billion) for 100% of UMG’s share capital.
Victor Khosla Warns Distressed-Debt Hedge Funds Are Losing Their Edge (Bloomberg)
Victor Khosla has a message for his peers in the world of distressed-debt investing: You’re losing your edge. Buying up beaten-down bonds and loans to take control of troubled companies is supposed to be strategic — not to mention secretive. Yet some creditors are all too willing to team up in the courtroom. Others are quick to flip their stakes, rather than make a longer-term investment in the companies they helped restructure. And just about all distressed buyers lean on Wall Street to execute their trades.
$2.6 Billion Hedge Fund Gladstone Hires a Fidelity Portfolio Manager and a Former Arrowgrass Partner to Boost its Lineup (Business Insider)
UK-based Gladstone Capital has boosted its leadership team with a new COO and a new sector head of technology, a source familiar with the matter told Insider. The global long short equity manager tapped Sumant Wahi as partner and sector head of technology. London-based Wahi joined the firm this month after serving as a portfolio manager for Fidelity International’s Future Connectivity fund, a global technology, media, and telecoms mutual fund, and an analyst responsible for US software and internet investments for over six years.
Photo by Marga Santoso on Unsplash
Record Month for Calgus (Hedge Nordic)
Stockholm (HedgeNordic) – Calgus Fond has scored its largest monthly gain on record after booking a gain of 11.8 percent in July. The long-biased long/short equity fund run by Gustaf von Sivers and Carl Urban is now up 30.6 percent in the first seven months of 2021 and currently ranks as the third-best performing member of the Nordic Hedge Index this year. “July was our best month ever,” Gustaf von Sivers tells Swedish business magazine Dagens Industri (DI). “It is our three large holdings that have pulled away.” XANO, which develops, acquires and operates niche engineering companies, has seen its share price rise 200 percent this year and 50 percent in the past month alone.
Macro Hedge Funds Primed to Capitalise on Market Trends Amid Fragmented Global Recovery (Hedge Week)
Global macro hedge funds remain well-placed to benefit from investment themes arising from fragmented recoveries and diverging macroeconomic policies in the coming months – despite recent slim returns and allocator outflows over the summer. Macro strategies have advanced 7.82 per cent so far in 2021, according to data provider BarclayHedge, after managers posted a narrow gain of 0.19 per cent in July. In comparison, the broader Barclay Hedge Fund Index – which measures average industry performance across strategy classes – has risen almost 9 per cent year-to-date, BarclayHedge said this week.
