Valeant Pharmaceuticals shares climb as it teams up with Bill Ackman to buy $42.2B Botox maker (FinancialPost)
Canada’s largest pharmaceutical company and the U.S. activist investor who overhauled CP Rail have joined forces in a mega-deal to buy Allergan, Inc. (NYSE:AGN), the maker of anti-wrinkle injection Botox. Quebec-based Valeant Pharmaceuticals Intl Inc (NYSE:VRX) said Monday it intends to propose a merger with California-based Allergan, using a combination of stock and cash, with the cash portion worth “around $15-billion,” according to U.S. regulatory filings posted Monday. A deal for Allergan would likely have a total value in excess of US$40-billion. …Valeant signed an agreement with activist investor William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management in February creating a jointly-owned entity to work together and acquire Allergan, filings show.
Textron CIO forecasts great merger between private equity and hedge fund managers (Opalesque)
Charles Van Vleet, Textron’s private pension fund CIO, gives his perspectives on why benchmarking against the HFRI is a mistake in a rising S&P environment in a recent Opalesque TV interview. He also forecasts a great merger between private equity and hedge fund managers, explains why the latter may be better at managing structured debt and what hedge funds can do to facilitate investments by allocators. The wrong way to use hedge funds His predecessor took on a 3% allocation in hedge funds and benchmarked it against the HFRI, he says, but he thinks it is the wrong way to use hedge funds.
An open letter to Chelsea Clinton’s fetus (NYPost)
Chelsea Clinton and her husband, hedge fund manager Marc Mezvinsky, are expecting their first child. Clinton, 34, made the announcement in the exact same way you would, in a speech she gave together with her mother at a Lower East Side event promoting the Clinton Foundation’s effort to empower girls. The baby is due sometime this fall. Dear Baby Clinton-Mezvinsky: Welcome to advanced gestation! Since you’re new around here, I thought you’d like to know a little bit about what makes you so special. The reason is, you’re going to live your whole life in make-believe!
Crispin Odey Explains Why He’s Shorting Manchester United (WSJ)
To hedge fund manager Crispin Odey, it’s clear who is to blame for Manchester United PLC (NYSE:MANU) +6.09%’s decline this season, and it’s not David Moyes, who left his post as manager of the English soccer club on Tuesday. Mr. Odey, one of London’s richest and most successful traders, has been running a short position in the stock, revealed in December, and sees the club’s on-the-field problems as the result of underinvestment over a number of years. “The Glazers (the club’s American owners) have to be a little bit scared if revenues start slipping… In the arms race they’ve underinvested,” said Odey.
Polar’s Sugarman to speak on convertible bonds at Zurich Forum (InvestmentEurope)
David Sugarman, fund manager for Polar Capital, will discuss convertible bonds at the InvestmentEurope Pension Fund Forum held in Zurich on 15 May. Sugarman will address opportunities to generate income and growth with convertible bonds in the context of rising interest rates. He joined Polar Capital in 2011 and leads the credit and convertible bond research for the ALVA global convertible fund and the ucits global convertible fund. Sugarman holds an MBA in both International Economic Policy and Business Administration from Columbia University. Prior to joining Polar Capital, he ran the US convertible bonds positions for CQS, then a USD 7 bn multi-asset hedge fund, and the US-based proprietary convertible research for Barclays Capital.
Hedge funds drive to another record (eFinancialNews)
During the first quarter of 2014, investors continued to move increasing amounts of money into hedge funds, sending industrywide assets under management to a record, industry tracker HFR said. The alternative asset managers, who can theoretically make money in both rising and falling markets, collected a net $26.32 billion of new cash in the first quarter, the most in almost three years. The flows pushed hedge fund assets overall to a peak – $2.7 trillion, nearly double the total from 2008 – and marked the seventh consecutive quarter that the industry has hit a record.
How can hard-hit hedge funds still justify hefty fees? (Spearswms)
By the 1990s, wrote Sebastian Mallaby in his book More Money than God, ‘the hedge-fund titans were the new Rockefellers, the new Carnegies, the new Vanderbilts. They were the new American elite — the latest act in the carnival of creativity and greed that powers the nation forward.’ Mallaby’s 2010 book defended hedge funds against the charge that their short-selling activities against national currencies and publicly owned investment banks had precipitated the global economic crisis in 2008, and he feared that over-regulation would ‘encourage the industry to become a very large, concentrated set of players instead of a lot of scrappy start-ups’.
Allergan news: Luck or something else? (CNBC)
Do You Exhibit Shark Behavior Like David Tepper? (Countingpips)
Meet David Tepper, the world’s greatest investor. He’s the Founder of Appaloosa Management, a hedge fund with roughly $20 billion under management. He also owns a chunk of the Pittsburgh Steelers. While Tepper may look tame in photographs, make no mistake… He’s a shark in the truest sense of the word. Last year, Tepper annihilated his competition to the tune of 42% returns. Over the last five years, he’s generated annualized gross returns as high as 50%. In 2011, Tepper famously bought a $43.5-million beachfront mega mansion in the Hamptons – just so he could tear it down and build a bigger one.
Liquid Holdings joins FIS Group Ecosystem (HedgeWeek)
FIS Group created the Ecosystem to assist talented entrepreneurial portfolio managers in the formation and strengthening of new asset management firms. Funded entirely by revenue generated from FIS Group’s core business and provided at no cost to the managers, the Ecosystem leverages FIS Group’s relationships in the market place to negotiate discounts from shared service vendors and facilitate introductions to potential capital providers. As one of the initial group of 17 select service providers in the Ecosystem, the Liquid platform will be offered as an option to emerging investment managers looking to institutionalise their business while meeting increased investor demands for transparency.
Carlyle ESG Funds Tumble With Wrong-Way Europe, U.S. Bets (Bloomberg)
Emerging Sovereign Group LLC, the $5 billion hedge-fund firm owned by Carlyle Group LP (NASDAQ:CG), posted losses this year in two of its funds after wrong-way bets on emerging markets, Europe’s recovery and U.S. Treasuries. The ESG Credit Macro Event Master Fund fell about 6 percent this year through April 11, according to letters and performance updates obtained by Bloomberg News, after tumbling 18 percent last year. The firm’s ESG Treasury Opportunities Master Portfolio dropped 22 percent in 2014 through the same period after rising 33 percent in 2013.
Activist hedge funds target Europe amid increasing power (Telegraph)
Activist hedge funds have tripled the amount of money under management in the past five years and are aiming their cash piles at Europe, according to research compiled by FTI Consulting and Hedge Fund Research. Such funds managed more than $93bn (£55bn) last year, almost triple that of five years ago and 42pc up from an estimated $65bn in 2012. The overall hedge fund industry is worth around $2.5? trillion. Investors are pouring into activist funds, driven by higher returns of 16.6pc last year on investment which has far outpaced the average hedge fund return of 9.3pc.
Hedge fund gets votes to call special Darden meeting, source says (Orlandosentinel)
Hedge fund Starboard Value has received enough shareholder votes to call a special meeting where Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE:DRI) investors would weigh in on the fate of Red Lobster, a source familiar with the situation said today. Starboard, which owns 5.5 percent of Darden’s stock, is trying to halt Darden’s plans to sell or spin off Red Lobster. It needed holders of at least half of Darden stock to call for the meeting, at which it wants shareholders to cast a nonbinding vote. A spokesman for Orlando-based Darden could not immediately be reached for comment.
Citi Hedge Fund Spin-Off Hires CDO Expert (Finalternatives)
Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C)’s former hedge fund unit has hired a collateralized debt obligation specialist at its London office. Maxine Malaure joined Napier Park Global Capital earlier this month. He is the firm’s first hire in the U.K. in almost two years; Napier Park’s London office has lost nearly half of its staff over the past 12 months. Malaure moves to Napier Park from Commerzbank, where he was a member of its structured products desk. He formerly worked at Bear Stearns and Dresdner Kleinwort. Napier Park spun-off from Citi early last year.
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