Starboard Value Losing Patience With RealD (Benzinga)
Activist hedge fund Starboard Value disclosed a 9.9 percent stake in RealD (NYSE:RLD) on October 1. At the same time, the fund offered to acquire the remainder of the company it did not already own for $12 per share, a 29 percent premium to the October 1 closing price. The following day, RealD said it will review the buyout offer with its advisers. Starboard Value has since waited patiently for a response which ultimately never came. In a letter to RealD’s Board of Directors on Wednesday, Starboard wrote that “you have neither provided us with any meaningful feedback, nor shown any willingness to engage with us, regarding our proposal.”
Under Hedge Fund Pressure, Madison Square Garden To Explore Spin-Off (Finalternatives)
Madison Square Garden said this week that it would consider separating its entertainment and sports business, two months after an activist hedge fund called for such a split. MSG owns the New York Knicks basketball team and New York Rangers hockey team, as well as the eponymous arena that they call home. It also puts on live events, such as concerts, in the building. “Investors favor companies with greater strategic focus on their core businesses,” CEO Tad Smith said.
Bankrupt Shipper Nautilus Probes Hedge Fund’s Debt Buy (Law360)
Bankrupt Nautilus Holdings Ltd. launched an investigation Wednesday into whether York Capital Management Global Advisors LLC had built up a blocking position in the debt of an operating unit in order to sabotage the container shipping venture’s restructuring efforts. Nautilus asked the judge overseeing its four-month-old bankruptcy to let it probe its suspicions that York had scooped up debt held by one of its four “silos” in order to poison the proceedings and advance the hedge fund’s equity interest in Costamare Inc (NYSE:CMRE), a competing container ship…
Judge OKs NY Discovery in Billionaires’ Beachfront Brawl (LitigationDaily)
Never underestimate how hard the rich will fight over beachfront property. That’s one takeaway from litigation now unfolding in Manhattan, California and the Caribbean, where two billionaire neighbors are locked in a nasty battle over prime oceanfront real estate in the Bahamas. In New York, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, representing hedge fund founder Louis Bacon, is using some of its patented moves from the Chevron-Ecuador litigation to try to dig up dirt on Bacon’s nemesis, Peter Nygard, who owns a Canadian women’s fashion company. Bacon wants to stop Nygard from further expanding the shoreline around Nygard’s 150,000-square-foot compound, where he’s known for throwing extravagant parties.
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