Leon Cooperman Calls Warren’s Wealth Tax ‘Foolish,’ Says People Would Hide Money to Avoid It (CNBC)
Billionaire Leon Cooperman told CNBC on Wednesday he believes rich people would find ways to avoid paying Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax if it were to become law. He also argued there are better mechanisms to raise federal government revenue. “The idea has no merit. It’s foolish. It probably is not legal,” he said on “Squawk Box.”
Hedge Fund Billionaire Sandell Pays $105 Million to Settle NY Tax Fraud Case (Reuters)
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The billionaire hedge fund manager Thomas Sandell has paid $105 million in back taxes and damages to settle charges he defrauded New York state and New York City out of taxes on a decade’s worth of fees, officials said on Tuesday. Sandell, a principal at Sandell Asset Management Corp, did not admit or deny wrongdoing in settling claims by state Attorney General Letitia James and New York City Corporation Counsel James Johnson, who jointly announced the settlement.
Marc Lasry, Chris Giancarlo Invest in Crypto Firm BlockTower (Bloomnberg)
Billionaire hedge-fund manager Marc Lasry and former U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo have invested in crypto-asset and blockchain investment firm BlockTower Capital. Terms weren’t disclosed. Lasry, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Avenue Capital Group, made an investment independent of his firm, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to speak on the record. Both Lasry and Giancarlo confirmed the investments, but declined to comment further.
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Billionaire investor Mario Gabelli has scored a 6,200% gain on Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (Business Insider)
Billionaire investor Mario Gabelli has been richly rewarded for his faith in Warren Buffett‘s Berkshire Hathaway. The Gamco Investors CEO snapped up more than 200 of Berkshire’s “A” shares for two of his funds in the late 1980s, he told CNBC this week. Gabelli paid an average of $6,000 for the shares, which now change hands at north of $370,000 each. Overall, Gabelli paid about $1.3 million for Berkshire stock worth $83 million as of Tuesday’s close – an astounding 6,200% gain.
Reddit Is Convinced It Knows Bill Ackman’s SPAC Target. Ackman Is Paying Attention (Institutional Investor)
Reddit users have another hedge fund legend in their crosshairs: Pershing Square Capital CEO Bill Ackman, whom they’ve followed into his $4 billion special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings. SPAC fever has heated up this year, but Ackman has yet to announce a merger partner for Tontine. That has left members of a Reddit subgroup, r/PSTH – named for the SPAC’s stock ticker – heading down the rabbit hole anxiously searching for clues.
Jon Little launches Alderwood Capital (InstitutionalAssetManager.co.uk)
Alderwood Capital (Alderwood), a London-based fund manager, has formally launched to institutional investors following FCA authorisation. The firm has also announced three new hires. Founded by Jon Little, the former founder and managing partner of Northill Capital, Alderwood seeks to provide equity capital to specialist boutique active managers through investment in GP (General Partner) stakes. The investment strategy will be deployed through a Cayman-domiciled closed end institutional fund which Alderwood plans to launch – subject to local regulatory approval – in the coming months.
Preqin Investor Outlook: Alternative Assets, H1 2021 (Preqin)
Alternative assets demonstrated their resilience and adaptability in a tumultuous 2020, and our latest survey of alternatives investors, conducted in November, bears this out. Last year, investors were not only satisfied with their investments, but told us they were gearing up to increase their exposure to alternatives. Only 7% of respondents are looking to invest less capital in alternatives this year, our lowest proportion in any year-end survey to date.
Abbvie Inc (ABBV) Chairman of the Board and CEO Richard A Gonzalez Sold $18.5 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
Chairman of the Board and CEO of Abbvie Inc, Richard A Gonzalez, sold 170,113 shares of ABBV on 03/01/2021 at an average price of $108.61 a share. The total sale was $18.5 million. AbbVie Inc is a biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops, manufactures and sells a range of pharmaceutical products for treating chronic autoimmune diseases, virology and neurological disorders.
Hedge Funds AUM Nearing $4tn in Q4 2020 (Opalesque.com)
Hedge funds assets under management (AUM) grew to just shy of $4tn in Q4 2020, mainly driven by performance, said Preqin in its Fact Sheet. AUM also rose $299bn from the end of Q3, marking 9.3% growth since the end of 2019 and reaching an all-time high of $3,995bn AUM also rose, to reach an all-time high of $3.995bn, it said. The second consecutive quarter of inflows also contributed: the industry received $1.8bn from investors, bringing H2 2020 net flows to +$18.8bn. However this was not enough to counteract outflows in the first half of the year, and year-end outflows totaled $44.5bn.
eVestment Taking Stock of Industry Diversity (Green Street)
Responding to subscriber demand, eVestment is compiling employment data to keep tabs on gender and minority hiring at hedge funds. The fund tracker began collecting the information six weeks ago and has heard from more than 400 firms across the spectrum of investment strategies. “We’re excited about the [response] rate. It seems to be increasing by dozens of firms and strategies every single day,” John Molesphini, head of insights at eVestment, said in a February webinar. The company’s aim is to streamline requests for such data, which is likely to become a staple of the due-diligence processes of pensions, endowments, foundations and consultants. eVestment, an Atlanta-based Nasdaq company, gives managers the opportunity to articulate their firms’ approaches to diversity and inclusion. That information would be available to eVestment’s 1,065 subscribers, who monitor the 3,629 fund operators in its database.
Wednesday 3/3 Insider Buying Report: ADC, LB (Nasdaq.com)
At Agree Realty, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Tuesday, Director John Rakolta Jr. bought 10,000 shares of ADC, at a cost of $63.50 each, for a total investment of $635,000. Agree Realty is trading off about 0.4% on the day Wednesday. Before this latest buy, Rakolta Jr. made one other purchase in the past year, buying $1.24M shares at a cost of $63.63 a piece. And on Friday, Director Patricia S. Bellinger purchased $199,893 worth of L Brands, purchasing 3,666 shares at a cost of $54.53 a piece. L Brands, is trading down about 0.9% on the day Wednesday. Bellinger was up about 3.1% on the buy at the high point of today’s trading session, with LB trading as high as $56.20 in trading on Wednesday.
Oregon Biotech Executive Pleads Guilty to Insider Trading Charges (MSN)
An Oregon biotech consultant pleaded guilty Tuesday to insider trading charges that he bought stock after learning about the acquisition of a Cambridge-based company in 2017. Mark Joseph Ahn, 58, admitted to two counts of securities fraud in Boston federal court, prosecutors said. Ahn, a former senior executive at multiple biotech companies, advised a New York firm from April to August 2017 during its acquisition of Dimension Therapeutics Inc., a biotech firm formerly based in Cambridge, prosecutors said.
Unity Software Inc (U) President and CEO John S. Riccitiello Sold $25 million of Shares (Guru Focus)
President and CEO of Unity Software Inc, John S. Riccitiello, sold 229,372 shares of U on 03/01/2021 at an average price of $109.12 a share. The total sale was $25 million. Unity Software Inc has a market cap of $28.89 billion; its shares were traded at around $105.620000 with and P/S ratio of 28.89.
