Activist Investor Provides Twist in Unilever Soap Opera (Reuters)
(Reuters) – Shares in Unilever rose 6% on Monday on reports that activist investor Nelson Peltz has built a stake in the consumer goods giant whose strategy is under scrutiny after a short-lived pursuit of GSK’s consumer healthcare arm. Peltz’s hedge fund, Trian Partners, has built an unspecified stake in Unilever, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday. The New York-based fund is known for proposing operational changes at its portfolio companies which have previously included Procter & Gamble.
Millennium has Quietly Minted Billions Off of America’s Passive-Investing Craze. Now Rivals are Racing to Catch Up. (Business Insider)
Down in Puerto Rico, in the cushy Dorado Beach neighborhood outside of San Juan, Glen Scheinberg, a 35-year-old Wall Street portfolio manager, plots and strategizes how to deploy billions in capital to exploit the periodic shifts in the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, the Russell, and myriad other indexes and the trillions in capital benchmarked to them. Betting on which companies will be added and subtracted to stock indexes, and how they’ll be weighted, isn’t a new strategy. Traders have been playing the arbitrage game known as index-rebalance trading since the 1990s.
Lee Enterprises Asks Investors to Help Fight Off Hedge Fund (The Washington Post)
OMAHA, Neb. — Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is asking its shareholders to help it fight off a hostile takeover offer from “vulture hedge fund” Alden Global Capital. The publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Buffalo News and dozens of other newspapers, including nearly every daily newspaper in Nebraska, sent a letter to shareholders Monday asking them to support its board nominees in the dispute with Alden. Lee, which is based in Davenport, Iowa, already rejected Alden’s $24 per share offer because it said the $141 million bid grossly undervalues Lee, but the two sides are locked in a court battle over whether Alden will be able to nominate its own directors.
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How One Hedge Fund Manager Is Using The Retail Investing Frenzy To Turn A Profit (Forbes)
Retail investors have become a force to be reckoned with over the past few years, but what does the dramatic increase in retail activity mean for hedge funds and other institutional investors? Moez Kassam of Anson Funds has been tracking retail investing activities and their impacts on the broader market.
Qblue Balanced and Heptagon Capital Launch Article 9 Fund (Hedge Week)
Qblue Balanced (Qblue), a Copenhagen based asset manager, and Heptagon Capital (Heptagon), a London based asset management firm, have jointly launched an Article 9 equity fund – ‘Qblue Global Sustainable Leaders Fund’. The fund went live with USD140.5 million on Wednesday, 12 January 2022 as a sub fund within Heptagon’s USD8 billion Irish UCITS fund umbrella.
Kyle Bass: Invest in Oil Because ‘No Way’ the Stock Market Goes Up in 2022 (Toronto Sun)
Stocks had a great 2021. But according to Kyle Bass, founder and chief investment officer of Hayman Capital Management, 2022 may not be as rosy. “With interest rates (rising) concurrently with quantitative tightening, there’s no way the stock market goes up this year; it probably goes down pretty aggressively, if they stick to that plan,” he said in a recent CNBC interview.
Activist Investor Calls on Peloton to Fire Its CEO (The Wall Street Journal)
An activist investor wants Peloton Interactive Inc. to fire its chief executive and explore a sale after the stationary-bike maker’s stock plummeted more than 80% from its high, as growth slowed. Blackwells Capital LLC is pushing the company’s board to fire CEO John Foley and pursue a sale, according to a letter Blackwells made public Monday. The firm believes Peloton could be an attractive acquisition target for larger technology or fitness-oriented companies, according to the letter.
Kohl’s Receives $9 Billion Offer Backed by Activist Investor (The New York Times)
The department store Kohl’s has received a roughly $9 billion offer to go private in a deal with an investment consortium backed by the activist hedge fund Starboard Value, according to two people familiar with the matter. The offer highlights the resurgent interest that activist investors are showing in department stores, as brick-and-mortar retailers have struggled with supply chain issues in the pandemic and increasing competition from online sites. Shares of retailers have been under pressure for the past several years, while those of online sites have, until recently, been soaring.
Fed Hikes Won’t Make Cash or Bonds Attractive: Ray Dalio (Fortune India)
The U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to increase interest rates is unlikely to make cash or bonds attractive to own, says Ray Dalio, co-chairman and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, the world’s biggest hedge fund with over $105 billion in assets, in an exclusive interview with Fortune India. With consumer price inflation close to a four-decade high of 7%, the Fed in its December meeting announced that it would wind down its quantitative easing programme (bond purchases) by March.
A Decent Year for Hedge Funds Is Still Not Good Enough (Bloomberg Quint)
(Bloomberg Opinion) — There’s good news and bad news in last year’s hedge fund numbers. While the industry has recovered some of its swagger, its performance continues to suggest that active portfolio managers aren’t living up to their promise to outpace passive returns, even during bouts of market volatility. The industry can point to its highest average returns since at least 2014 and the fresh cash being allocated to firms by investors. Skeptics will note that customers would have made more money buying a low-cost equity index tracker tied to the benchmark U.S. stock index. I count myself in the latter camp.
Hedge Fund Managers Look Forward to Favorable 2022 Market Conditions (Pensions & Investments)
Hedge fund managers anticipate plentiful investment opportunities in 2022 given pandemic-driven global turmoil, the specter of rising inflation and the impact of central bank actions. Unsettled market conditions likely will lead to a higher level of dispersion in markets, which is exactly what hedge fund managers need to produce alpha, sources said.
Monday 1/24 Insider Buying Report: ORCL, CNXC (Nasdaq.com)
At Oracle, a filing with the SEC revealed that on Thursday, Director Charles W. Moorman bought 15,000 shares of ORCL, at a cost of $83.76 each, for a total investment of $1.26M. Investors are able to buy ORCL even cheaper than Moorman did, with the stock trading as low as $80.38 at last check today — that’s 4.0% under Moorman’s purchase price. Oracle is trading down about 1.8% on the day Monday. This purchase marks the first one filed by Moorman in the past twelve months. And at Concentrix, there was insider buying on Friday, by Director Kathryn Hayley who purchased 600 shares for a cost of $171.55 each, for a total investment of $102,930. Concentrix is trading down about 2.8% on the day Monday. Bargain hunters have the opportunity to bag CNXC at a price even lower than Hayley did, with shares changing hands as low as $164.46 at last check today — that’s 4.1% under Hayley’s purchase price.
Insider Trading: January 24, 2022 (BIV.com)
Insider Bharat Bhushan, director. Company: Beyond Medical Technologies Inc. (CNSX:DOCT). Shares owned: 3,000,000. Trade date: January 10. Trade total: $24,000. Trade: Sale of 400,000 shares at a price of $0.05 to $0.07 per share. Insider Frank Stephen Borowicz, director. Company: Hemisphere Energy Corp. (TSX-V:HME). Shares owned: 587,500. Trade date: January 6, 7. Trade total: $451,502. Trade: Sale of 451,500 shares at prices from $1.00 to $1.01 per share.
