Hedge Fund and Insider Trading News: Carl Icahn, Barings BDC Inc (BBDC), Pure Storage Inc (PSTG), Herman Miller, Inc. (MLHR), and More

Carl Icahn Wants to Fight Dell Again (Bloomberg)
In 2013, Michael Dell and his private-equity backers at Silver Lake took Dell Inc. private for about $25 billion. A lot of investors, and for a while a Delaware court, thought that the price was too low, and that Michael Dell had sandbagged investors by giving them a pessimistic view of Dell’s prospects so that he could buy it cheaply himself. Arguably those complaints turned out to have some merit, as Dell has done very well in private hands and is now looking to return to the public markets.

Francisco Amaral Leitao / shutterstock.com

Second Activist Targets Canadian Miner Detour; Seeks Board Changes (Reuters)
TORONTO, Oct 16 (Reuters) – U.S. hedge fund Livermore Partners is calling for an overhaul of the board at Detour Gold Corp and a strategic review, becoming the second activist to target the Canadian mining company. Livermore, which has engaged in other activist campaigns including at Canadian and UK media firm Entertainment One Ltd., sent a letter to Detour on Tuesday, saying the board has failed its shareholders on “numerous governance and operational matters.”

Hedge Funds May Get More Joy Trading Euro Credit Carry Than U.S. (Bloomberg)
For hedge funds, shifting sands in the global credit cycle offer a bounty of opportunities to extract yield — trades that favor Europe over U.S. Investors should consider relative-value trades using European credit default swaps on high-yield debt, Societe Generale SA analysts including head of cross-asset quantitative research Sandrine Ungari wrote in a research note this month. Such strategies should benefit from the positive yield differential between junk-rated and investment grade credit, but also from spread compression, their report said.