Silicon Investor - Mr. Pink's Picks: selected event-driven value investments

[StockDung] Billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb (founder of Third Point) is actin...

StockDung — 5/16/2026 10:39:45 AM

Billionaire hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb (founder of Third Point) is acting as a major financial backer for the former reality television star Spencer Pratt, who is running for mayor of Los Angeles in an effort to unseat incumbent Karen Bass. [ 1, 2]

The Financial Backer: Daniel S. Loeb

Daniel Loeb is widely known as a legendary activist investor and the CEO of the New York-based hedge fund Third Point. Historically an equity-driven investor, Loeb has shifted a significant portion of his firm’s focus toward private credit and insurance assets, remaining one of Wall Street's most influential figures. [ 1, 2, 3]

The Candidate: Spencer Pratt's Mayoral Run

Pratt, who first rose to fame on MTV's The Hills, is running an unconventional, buzz-driven, but surprisingly well-funded campaign for LA Mayor. His campaign is backed by "superpower" executives and mega-donors who are looking to disrupt Los Angeles politics, with Loeb serving as a prominent financial supporter. Pratt is running on a centrist and public-safety platform, appealing to voters who are frustrated with homelessness and current city management. [ 1, 2, 3]

The Network of Donors

Loeb is not the only high-profile business leader backing Pratt's campaign. The candidate’s growing list of mega-donors and prominent supporters includes: [ 1]

Bobby Kotick, Former CEO of Activision Blizzard
Cameron & Tyler Winklevoss, Cryptocurrency billionaires
Jeanie Buss, Controlling owner of the Los Angeles Lakers
Sean Rad, Co-founder of Tinder [ 1]

For tips on how Dan Loeb reads the macroeconomic landscape, adapts his hedge fund strategies, and assesses the resilience of the U.S. economy:

[StockDung] Longtime Democrat Donor Bill Ackman Rips Into Biden-Harris for Disastrous Afghan...

StockDung — 10/23/2024 4:06:24 PM

Longtime Democrat Donor Bill Ackman Rips Into Biden-Harris for Disastrous Afghanistan Withdrawal and for Allowing Iran to Become Rich Again (Video)

[X]

.@BillAckman rips into Kamala Harris for the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal and allowing Iran to become rich again.

"Terrorists test you out. If you don't respond aggressively, the only thing they respect is power. The result is Putin rolls into Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/jmOQXyU5H8
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) October 23, 2024

[/X]

[StockDung] Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb bets on a Trump victory, says Republicans will ...

StockDung — 10/23/2024 2:49:45 PM

Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb bets on a Trump victory, says Republicans will be good for financial markets

The Feed Last Updated: 18 October, 2024 06:44 AM -4 GMT

Synopsis
A billionaire investor has suddenly surprised everyone by claiming that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have a high chance of emerging victorious in the upcoming US elections in November, and that their policies could indeed be helpful for the overall growth of the US stock and investment market.

Billionaire investor Daniel Loeb has suddenly adjusted his stance in order to claim that the Republicans are good for being at the helm of the government at the White House. He is of the opinion that the Republican party's policies will actually help in boosting financial markets in the United States, if Donald Trump comes to power after the US elections in November.

Is a Donald Trump regime healthy for the US stock market?Loeb is not the only one who is looking at adjusting his portfolio, in order to capture a potential boom in the financial markets in the scenario that the Republicans come into power. There are many who are betting on some particular stocks that are destined to skyrocket if Donald Trump ascends to power at the White House. These are more informally referred to as 'Trump trades', and are behaving according to the elections and the growth of the Republican party's popularity ratings.

Also Read: Harris leads Trump by 4 points in this new survey; can she go all the way

by Taboola
Sponsored Links

You May Like

Your Ultimate Camper Van Guide [Start Here]Camper Van Deals | Search Ads
Search Now

Is Donald Trump's popularity soaring?Loeb is of the opinion that Donald Trump is more likely to win the White House and the chances of a republican victory has somewhat increased in recent times, which has the potential to bring in an optimistic impact in the overall US markets, according to a Reuters report. Meanwhile, a Reuters/Ipsos poll has found that Kamala Harris held a lead of 3 points over Trump this week, meaning that the fight has come very close between the two candidates, and Trump is no more lagging behind, as he was, a couple of weeks back.

Loeb is also of the opinion that the White house administration, if led by the Republicans, will help in improving the wave of corporate activity in the country, which would ultimately bolster the growth of the industrial infrastructure.

[candsrr] a recent headline: Forget Nvidia: Billionaire Daniel Loeb Has 31% of His $8.7 B...

candsrr — 9/1/2024 9:50:14 AM

a recent headline:

Forget Nvidia: Billionaire Daniel Loeb Has 31% of His $8.7 Billion Portfolio in Just 4 Unstoppable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Instead

Motley Fool

[StockDung] On another occasion, Hunter asked specifically for a White House tour for his bu...

StockDung — 4/25/2024 10:17:40 AM

On another occasion, Hunter asked specifically for a White House tour for his business associate at Third Point. Hunter and his associates were invested with Third Point, a hedge fund founded by Democratic billionaire donor Dan Loeb. Emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop revealed that they were helping Dan Loeb and Third Point raise billions of dollars from China’s sovereign wealth fund, CIC.

[Mongo2116] Mr. Pink only needs his tattered bathrobe to be happy........ohhh and the place ...

Mongo2116 — 2/19/2024 10:05:34 PM

Mr. Pink only needs his tattered bathrobe to be happy........ohhh and the place in the Hamptons

[Cautious_Optimist] We were all wiser then. The shorts of P&D pigs and crim ventures were especiall...

Cautious_Optimist — 2/19/2024 7:54:51 PM

We were all wiser then. The shorts of P&D pigs and crim ventures were especially fun.

Solving todays market is a tough SOB. Efficient relationships of prices to value no longer can be modelled consistently, long or short. Computer programs, like price fixers, are waiting to take our money for their stealthy class of investors.

The game is piling on a relatively few chosen oligopolistic stocks into the stratosphere without worry or discounting for corrections or busts. Small players on Reddit even got into the game with chosen small and midcaps, skyrocketing valuations in a coalition of MLM like buyers.

Too risky to short now, valuations too high to go long. Still money being made holding or trading of course. Derivative prices of the big one-way risers are insane.

Looking backwards, shoulda been less analytical and fancy, and just bought-and-held Facebook/Meta and Alphabet and even Microsoft; maybe current plays like Supermicro and of course NVDA. Why didn't I? Because they were overvalued then and now are reinventing the definition of Tulipmania.

Bigger and bigger and bigger until the retail street goes all in and the computers are selling into the frenzy.

I am, perhaps foolishly, holding my fire in this market. Admittedly, I've taken ugly gut punches from companies like Pfizer and Ford. It does hurt to swallow the lost opportunity in my current risk aversion when I look at my shoulda coulda woulda momo list.

Even Mr. P$nks' Dan Loeb (think Spiderman and Peter Parker, or Batman and Bruce Wayne) has lost his magic, I feel a little better that I'm not the only one.

[Mongo2116] OHHH Lord he once was WISE!!!!

Mongo2116 — 2/19/2024 4:58:20 PM

[StockDung] MA$$IVE LO$$E$ WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Dan Loeb’s Hot Hand Goes ColdHedge fund Third...

StockDung — 10/1/2023 7:42:12 AM

MA$$IVE LO$$E$ WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE: Dan Loeb’s Hot Hand Goes ColdHedge fund Third Point, after years of strong returns, has registered big losses after misreading the market. Now it faces a flood of customer withdrawals.
[object Object] ILLUSTRATION BY ALEXANDRA CITRIN-SAFADI/WSJ; PHOTO: BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS

By Gregory Zuckerman
Follow

and Peter Rudegeair
Follow

Sept. 29, 2023 5:30 am ET

[S. maltophilia] Earlier this month, Dan Loeb said he wouldn’t be buying SiriusPoint. The Third ...

S. maltophilia — 5/22/2023 11:35:30 PM

Earlier this month, Dan Loeb said he wouldn’t be buying SiriusPoint. The Third Point chief said he and the insurer, which he co-created less than three years ago by merging his hedge fund’s reinsurance business with—you guessed it—Sirius International Insurance Group, couldn’t agree on a price.

It turns out, this may be because old Danny Boy isn’t quite as liquid as he—or his clients—would like,

Daniel Loeb's Third Point told its hedge-fund clients Friday that investors exiting its funds would be paid out with a mix of cash and the equivalent of an IOU for about 9% of their money…. Third Point didn't give a timeline for when it expected to give redeeming investors all their cash back but said it would work with investors to facilitate the sale of their interests on the secondary market.

Of course, lots of hedge funds have been putting up new barriers between investors and their money, and Third Point is hardly alone among hedge.....

dealbreaker.com

[petal] Smart people can be stupid too... Can't believe that ppl would fall for SBF th...

petal — 1/12/2023 4:37:01 AM

Smart people can be stupid too...

Can't believe that ppl would fall for SBF though, honestly. I saw him talk with that poker guy, Tom Dwan, and Dwan seemed to know more about crypto than SBF. And seemed waaaay smarter. SBF seemed daft in relation.

The amount of smart ppl that believed in the price of BTC and other crypto currencies, is unbelievable.

[StockDung] Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb controlled more than six million preferred shares of...

StockDung — 1/11/2023 6:55:07 PM

Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb controlled more than six million preferred shares of FTX through his company called Third Point.

[StockDung] Appears Sam Bankman Freid has Mr Pink as a investor in Ponzi scheme Well-known ...

StockDung — 1/11/2023 8:49:22 AM

Appears Sam Bankman Freid has Mr Pink as a investor in Ponzi scheme

Well-known funds run by Tiger Global, Thoma Bravo, Sequoia Capital, SkyBridge, and Third Point, among others, were listed as owning millions of both common and preferred shares of FTX.

[Fame] I was able to get my old SI log in from way back when. Still alive and kickin, F...

Fame — 8/15/2022 7:45:19 PM

I was able to get my old SI log in from way back when.
Still alive and kickin,
Fame

[Famester] OH! How I miss the sage and divine wisdom of Mr. Pink. These hallowed pages appe...

Famester — 8/15/2022 5:16:21 PM

OH! How I miss the sage and divine wisdom of Mr. Pink.
These hallowed pages appear deserted without him.

He is venturing in the fashionable penthouses in Manhattan, recalling the days where he was surviving on Top Ramen.
Now he plays with the dogs of the Dow, DIS and others.
I am sure the great Dan Loeb is quite fond of Mr. Pink.

I wish them the best of luck in their venture to oust the despicable Ms. Tlaib.

Fame

[enrico99] Is Mr. Pink participating in the #CELShortSqueeze?

enrico99 — 6/21/2022 6:01:02 PM

[StockDung] MR P$NK ATTEMPTS TO OUST CONGRESSWOMEN RADHIDA TLAIB. " The PAC is primarily fu...

StockDung — 6/15/2022 10:04:58 AM

MR P$NK ATTEMPTS TO OUST CONGRESSWOMEN RADHIDA TLAIB.

" The PAC is primarily funded by billionaire hedge fund investor and philanthropist Daniel Loeb, though its initial founder remains unknown."

----------------------------------------------------------

https://theintercept.com/2022/06/10/rashida-tlaib-urban-empowerment-action-pac-bakari-sellers/

NEW PAC BACKED BY BAKARI SELLERS PLANS TO SPEND $1 MILLION TO UNSEAT REP. RASHIDA TLAIB

With stated aims to support Black communities and narrow the racial wealth gap, the group is financed by a billionaire hedge fund investor who also funds Republicans and AIPAC.

Akela Lacy
June 10 2022, 11:56 a.m.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., speaks at a Student Loan Forgiveness rally near the White House on April 27, 2022 in Washington, D.C. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

A NEW POLITICAL action committee “dedicated to empowering urban communities to narrow the wealth gap between Black and White Americans” has picked its most prominent and first incumbent target this cycle: Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.

Launched in October by more than 40 Black business and civic leaders, the group, Urban Empowerment Action PAC, has labeled the challenge against Tlaib its “premier race” and plans to spend at least $1 million to unseat her, arguing that Detroit, a city that is majority Black, should be represented by a Black member in Congress. The PAC is primarily funded by billionaire hedge fund investor and philanthropist Daniel Loeb, though its initial founder remains unknown.

The slew in planned spending comes as top Democrats continue to fight against the party’s progressive wing with help from Republican donors and outside groups backing conservative candidates in both parties. Democratic leaders and outside groups aligned with them have spent millions so far to defeat progressives in several competitive primaries this cycle.

Tlaib is facing her second primary as an incumbent in August, having fended off a 2020 challenge from fellow Michigan Democrat Brenda Jones, who replaced former Democratic Rep. John Conyers after a special election in 2018. Tlaib’s supporters point to her wins for her Detroit constituents, including $15 million she secured for local community projects in this year’s House budget bill, her efforts to extend the child tax credit, and the pandemic aid funding she obtained for her district in 2020, when Detroit received the fifth-largest appropriation among major cities.

UEA PAC spokesperson Henry Greenidge told The Intercept that the group is targeting Tlaib because its “aim is to get Black candidates in office who will champion common-sense solutions that uplift Black people.” Greenidge said that because of Michigan’s recent redistricting, Tlaib “is running for a newly drawn seat where she is not an incumbent in the largest majority-Black city in America, a seat we believe should be represented by a member of the Congressional Black Caucus.” The group is backing candidate Janice Winfrey, Detroit’s city clerk, who has slammed Tlaib’s vote against last year’s bipartisan infrastructure package and her criticism of U.S. military funding to Israel, which Winfrey supports.

Tlaib was first elected in 2018 on a wave that brought several progressives into the House, including Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; the two became the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Loeb, the first and single largest donor to UEA PAC, has supported several conservative Democrats, including Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio. A registered Democrat, he has given more than $1 million to Republicans so far this cycle and gave UEA PAC $150,000 in October.

MOST READ

Meltdowns Have Brought Progressive Advocacy Groups to a Standstill at a Critical Moment in World History
Ryan Grim

History Says Democracy Will Die if Democrats Don’t Try “Going Big”
Jon Schwarz

Breaking Unions With the Language of Diversity and Social Justice
Lee Fang

In addition to Loeb, UEA PAC is backed by political pundit and former South Carolina state Rep. Bakari Sellers, who is also helping it raise funds. The group has spent $115,000 since late May backing Rep. Nikema Williams, D-Ga., who won her primary last month with more than 86 percent of the vote, and Democratic California state Sen. Sydney Kamlager, who led in Tuesday’s nonpartisan primary. In both races, the group has paid for direct-mail and digital ads from Tusk Strategies, the consulting firm started by venture capitalist Bradley Tusk, who supported Mike Bloomberg’s and Andrew Yang’s New York City mayoral campaigns.

The PAC also plans to support candidates Nykea Pippion McGriff in Illinois’s 1st District and Florida state Sen. Randolph Bracy in his state’s 10th District, but so far Tlaib is UEA PAC’s only incumbent target. Sellers told Politico last month that he didn’t have a particular “beef” with Tlaib but criticized her for voting against last year’s infrastructure package. Tlaib and several other progressive Democrats opposed the bill in protest of congressional leadership’s abandonment of their strategy to simultaneously pass President Joe Biden’s massive social spending package — which included the expanded child tax credit that Tlaib sought for Detroit families. Sellers told Politico that “somebody else can do the job better.” Sellers did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment.

Tlaib has also long clashed with more conservative members of her party over her vocal criticisms of U.S. military support for Israel and human rights abuses in Palestine. Her public scrutiny of unchecked U.S. funding for Israeli occupation forces has made her a target of pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, of which Sellers is a close ally, and Pro-Israel America, which endorsed Winfrey in March. Tlaib is also facing a challenge from former Michigan state Rep. Shanelle Jackson, who has similarly criticized her stance on Israel.

RelatedJewish Progressives Sound the Alarm as Pro-Israel Groups Target Marginalized Candidates

Loeb has also contributed to AIPAC, giving $5,000 to the group in April alone. AIPAC’s new PAC, United Democracy Project, has also spent millions to defeat progressives this cycle and endorsed more than 100 Republican candidates who voted to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Loeb also gave $125,000 in June to its counterpart, Democratic Majority for Israel PAC, which has also spent similar figures fighting progressives this cycle.

In March, Loeb gave $250,000 to the GOP–aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, another $250,000 to the similarly aligned Senate Leadership Fund, and, since August, more than $340,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He has given more than $255,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee since January and contributed this cycle to the campaigns for Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.; Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker; and Ohio Senate candidate Jane Timken, who ran as a pro-Donald Trump Republican and lost in last month’s primary race.

Other major donors to UEA PAC include the Benoit Group, a real estate developer based in Georgia, and Striving for a Better New York, a PAC linked to New York City Mayor Eric Adams that backs conservative candidates and is funded by real estate moguls and Republicans. In April, UEA PAC received a $10,000 contribution from New Jersey attorney Calvin Souder, a partner at the firm Souder, Shabazz, & Woolridge Law Group, as well as $5,000 each from from Google Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy Wilson White, Google Vice President of Trust and Safety David Graff, and Ron Redwing, CEO of the Redwing group, a consulting firm based in Tennessee.

It’s not clear who actually started the PAC, and the only person listed on its filing documents with the Federal Election Commission is Treasurer Diane Evans, the CEO and founder of the compliance consulting firm Evans & Katz Campaign Finance Professionals.

Greenidge, the UEA PAC spokesperson, told The Intercept that the group is “proud to have the support of our numerous donors, including Dan Loeb, who are all committed to fighting for issues that are important to Black communities, such as voter empowerment, access to high-quality education, and creating greater economic opportunity.”

If they manage to unseat Tlaib, conservative Democrats would score a monumental win. The party’s conservative flank has railed against the growing number of progressives who have tried to push the party left, on issues from providing families with direct cash assistance to foreign policy in Israel.

[Cautious_Optimist] Observe what is happening. [X] Listen to the sound of short-only fund inflows ...

Cautious_Optimist — 8/27/2020 12:43:04 PM

Observe what is happening.

[X]

Listen to the sound of short-only fund inflows 🌊. #FraudsAhead https://t.co/Xl4SfEoTlB
— Cory Johnson (@CoryTV) August 27, 2020

[/X]

[StockDung] “Hell Is Coming!” – Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Goes on TV, Touts Panic, Gets...

StockDung — 3/26/2020 8:05:37 PM

“Hell Is Coming!” – Hedge Fund Manager Bill Ackman Goes on TV, Touts Panic, Gets Everyone Scared, Markets Tank and He Walks Away with $2.6 Billion
by Jim Hoft March 26, 2020 148 Comments
257Share Tweet Email

Hedge Fund Smash and Grab!

Read more
2/6

Last week American hedge fund boss Bill Ackman created a panic by urging President Trump to shut down the borders, “Hell is coming!”

During his interview with CNBC Ackman created panic by pushing the lie that the virus kills 1-2% of people and 3-4% of people in China.

He told CNBC in a shaky voice that, “This thing can spread everywhere!… 50% of the world is going to get infected! I just rolled this thing forward and said it’s just a matter of time!”

Bill Ackman also posted several horrified tweets about the coronavirus.

Now we know he was betting against the markets — while pushing an end of the world scenario on Twitter and TV.

Bill Ackman announced today he made $2.6 billion from a one-off bet that the coronavirus would cause a global panic.

The Daily Mail reported:

American hedge fund boss Bill Ackman has made $2.6 billion by betting against the markets just days after stoking fears by saying ‘hell is coming’ and begging President Donald Trump to shut down the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Pershing Square Capital Management hedge fund manager said his firm had made $2.6billion from a one-off bet that the coronavirus outbreak would cause a global market crash.

His firm seized upon bond market turmoil during the coronavirus crisis in buying ‘credit protection on various global investment grade and high-yield credit indices’.

The bet, which was designed to protect Pershing Square Capital Management from falling stock markets triggered by the pandemic, saw his firm make almost 100 times its initial $27million investment.

The firm completed the transaction on March 23.

The enormous return came barely a week after Ackman gave an emotional television interview claiming ‘hell is coming’ for American business.

Ackman told CNBC on March 18 that ‘hell is coming’.

He urged American business to stop share buybacks and to preserve cash.

‘America will end as we know it. I’m sorry to say so, unless we take this option,’ he warned.

[StockDung] Daniel Loeb’s Yacht Damages Belize Coral Reef. Samadhi superyacht under investi...

StockDung — 2/13/2020 1:23:01 PM

Daniel Loeb’s Yacht Damages Belize Coral Reef. Samadhi superyacht under investigation after being filmed anchored on pristine Unesco-listed reef.

By Laura Millan Lombrana
February 13, 2020, 5:31 AM EST Updated on February 13, 2020, 11:16 AM EST

Daniel Loeb, chief executive officer of Third Point, at a conference in 2017. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

A luxury yacht owned by hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb damaged a pristine reef atoll in Belize near the famous Great Blue Hole, a popular diving site.

The 200-foot (61 meter) Samadhi, owned by Third Point founder Loeb, was filmed last Sunday anchored at Belize’s Lighthouse Reef Atoll. A spokesperson said Loeb was not in the vessel at the time. The Financial Times first reported the incident and said there would be an official investigation.

A spokesperson for Belize’s Department of the Environment told the FT that the vessel had damaged the area.

The Samadhi yacht owned by hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb.
Source: MarineTraffic
“As a life-long surfer and someone who loves the ocean, I was horrified to hear about this incident in Belize,” Loeb said in a statement. “We promptly contacted the Belize Audubon Society (a conservation group) and are committed to working together to restore the reef.”

More From
Bloomberg Green

Loeb acquired the Samadhi in 2013 from banker and former Citigroup Chief Executive Office Sandy Weill. The vessel is offered for charter on several websites, with a starting price of $360,000 per week.

While on a charter trip, the yacht was anchored on a patch of sand off the coast of Belize and the anchor was inadvertently dragged onto coral, according to an emailed statement by Wright Maritime Group, the company managing safety at the vessel. The company will be collaborating with local environmental groups on the remediation and conservation of local reefs in the area, the statement said.

The Belize barrier reef is a Unesco World Heritage site and the largest of its kind in the northern hemisphere, and was described by Charles Darwin as “the most remarkable reef in the West Indies.”

(Adds comments in the fourth and sixth paragraphs.)

[StockDung] Why did Kamala Harris let Herbalife off the hook? Alexander Nazaryan 5 hours ...

StockDung — 3/18/2019 11:05:52 AM

Why did Kamala Harris let Herbalife off the hook?

Alexander Nazaryan

5 hours ago
Reactions Reblog on Tumblr Share Tweet Email

Herbalife's corporate office in Los Angeles and Kamala Harris. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photos: Damian Dovarganes/AP, AP)WASHINGTON — At a rally in late January in her native Oakland, Calif., U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris announced her intention to seek the presidential nomination by casting herself as a tireless advocate of men and women who lack power and wealth. The former attorney general of California — who since 2017 has been the state’s junior senator — described her first appearance in the courtroom, as a young San Francisco district attorney. “I knew I wanted to protect people,” Harris told the crowd of 20,000. “And I knew that the people in our society who are most often targeted by predators are also most often the voiceless and vulnerable.”

But as the attorney general of the nation’s largest state — and therefore one of the most powerful law enforcement officials in the nation — Harris declined to investigate Herbalife, the nutritional supplement company that has been accused of fraudulent marketing practices. Documents exclusively obtained by Yahoo News show that in 2015, prosecutors in the San Diego office of the California attorney general sent Harris a lengthy memorandum that argued for an investigation into Herbalife and requested resources in order to undertake such an investigation. Similar investigations into Herbalife were already taking place elsewhere.

About three weeks after the San Diego letter was sent, Harris received the first of three donations to her campaign for the U.S. Senate from Heather Podesta, the powerful Washington lobbyist whose ex-husband Tony’s firm, then called the Podesta Group, had worked for Herbalife since 2013. Heather Podesta’s own lobbying firm, Heather Podesta and Partners, would soon be hired by Herbalife, too.

Harris did not pursue an investigation, even as the Federal Trade Commission proceeded with an investigation of its own, which had been opened the previous March and which suggested that sufficient grounds for such scrutiny did exist. In fact, the San Diego letter had meticulously laid out those grounds, pointing out that Herbalife presented itself to the public as a lawful enterprise, but that it could nevertheless be “engaged in less obvious conduct” that potentially harmed both Herbalife distributors and Herbalife customers. Allegations of such conduct, by 2015, had become commonplace in media reports.

Harris never gave a reason for declining to investigate Herbalife, but the decision stands in contrast to her oft-expressed promise to fight for ordinary Americans for whom the 21st century economy seems to hold little promise. Those are the very same Americans, critics say, that Herbalife recruited — and exploited.

Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, in 2015. His position at a law firm that represented Herbalife raised the eyebrows of a financial journalist. (Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)“It’s disgusting,” says Julie Contreras, a Chicago-based activist whose “Afuera con Herbalife” campaign sharply criticized the company for preying on Latino communities. Contreras says that her Spanish-language nickname for Harris is “Que Mala,” a play on “Kamala” that translates to “how bad.”

“Kamala Harris did a huge injustice” in declining to investigate the Los Angeles-based company, says Contreras, who has publicly supported Beto O’Rourke’s campaign.

Harris’s presidential campaign said it was not accurate to see in her treatment of Herbalife a hesitation about aggressively pursuing corporations. Harris “has a long record of going after bad corporate actors engaging in fraudulent behavior and delivering results for people who have been taken advantage of,” said campaign spokesman Ian Sams.

He noted that as California’s attorney general, Harris “got $20 billion for California homeowners after taking on mortgage fraud by the big banks, secured a billion-dollar judgment against for-profit Corinthian Colleges for scamming students, and put Ponzi and pyramid schemers in prison.”

Founded in 1980, Herbalife calls itself a “global nutrition company whose purpose is to make the world healthier and happier.” It is a multilevel marketing operation — MLM, for short — meaning that instead of selling its weight-loss shakes and pills through proprietary outlets, it relies on distributors who make a commission when they sell the products, which they can do out of their own homes or through “nutrition clubs” that cannot feature Herbalife branding, even though they sell Herbalife products. Such clubs have recently proliferated in Latino communities across the United States, where Herbalife’s hold is strongest.

Herbalife protein bars at Herbalife's corporate office in Los Angeles. (Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP)Critics believe that MLMs, including Herbalife, are pyramid schemes because their profits stem from recruitment of new salespeople, rather than sales to end customers (the pyramid is the shape of such a company’s growing distributor base). Other than Herbalife, the most well-known American corporation to stand accused of running a pyramid scheme is Amway, the home products company founded 60 years ago in Michigan. In 1979, Amway won a crucial case in which the FTC called it a pyramid scheme, but the allegations persisted, both against Amway and other MLMs. In 2010, Amway paid out $56 million in the settlement of a class action suit that revived the pyramid scheme charges. Yet the company survived. (The current federal education secretary, Betsy DeVos, is married to the heir of the Amway fortune.)

Herbalife attracted scrutiny almost from the start. In 1986, the state of California imposed a consent decree on Herbalife that said the company could not make “false or misleading representations” about how much money distributors could expect to make. The company also had to stop making allegedly false or exaggerated claims about its products.

But that did little to stop the company’s growth, and it continued to rapidly expand both in the United States and around the world. In 2003, Herbalife hired Disney executive Michael O. Johnson, who brought management sophistication to its operations. A tanned triathlete, he seemed a living embodiment of the company’s promises. (The company’s founder, Mark Hughes, had died of a drug overdose three years before.) The company went public the following year; a 2005 annual report declared its market capitalization to be $359.8 million.

But despite Johnson’s efforts to add corporate sheen, critics maintained that Herbalife’s profits came not from sales of its weight loss products, but in the aggressive recruitment of new members, each of whom was expected to buy large amounts of inventory from the company. The new recruits quickly realized, according to Herbalife’s detractors, that the inventory of pills and powders itself was largely worthless and that the only way to make money was to attract new recruits.

Herbalife has long denied such accusations, portraying itself as a company that provides access to wealth to people who, for one reason or another, are unable to find success in traditional employment. The company declined to speak on the record for this story.

Harris was first asked publicly to look into Herbalife’s alleged wrongdoing in 2013, when the company held its Extravaganza Latina in Los Angeles. Protesters picketed the event, urging Harris to investigate Herbalife. “We are asking Attorney General Harris to help us protect vulnerable, low income Latinos and other minorities from these schemes that have cost people their life savings,” one of the protest’s organizers said.

At the time, Herbalife was fending off another existential challenge, from Manhattan hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, whose founder, Bill Ackman, had become convinced that though the company was worth $8.1 billion at the time, that valuation was predicated on illusion. He declared war on Herbalife with the public presentation of a 334-page PowerPoint dossier, the 64th page of which contained his central argument: “Herbalife is a Pyramid Scheme.”

Brent Wilkes, then national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, speaks against Herbalife in Los Angeles in 2013. (Photo: Fred Prouser/Reuters)Ackman eventually came to take an astonishingly bold $1 billion short position on Herbalife, meaning that he borrowed stock in the company with the expectation that the price of the stock would fall dramatically. If that happened, Ackman’s short would provide him with a massive windfall, not to mention a validation of his beliefs about the company. Ackman and Pershing Square declined to comment for this article.

Ackman’s public quest to take down Herbalife — he was explicit about that goal — brought newfound scrutiny to the company, pressuring regulators to act. The FTC opened an investigation into Herbalife in March 2014, with Lisa Madigan, attorney general of Illinois, and Eric Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, doing the same the following month. That meant that what were at the time the country’s fourth and fifth most populous states had now joined the fight. The FBI started an investigation in April 2014, as well.

Harris remained silent. That January, activists met with members of her office. “The concerns were clearly articulated to her staff,” says Brent Wilkes, who at the time was executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the groups asking Harris to investigate Herbalife. “They heard us, asked interesting questions,” Wilkes recalls. Wilkes said that he was “hopeful” that Harris “would come around,” but the activism failed to make a sufficient impact on Harris.

Wilkes did not know that at the time, Herbalife was represented by Venable, which also employed Harris’s husband, Douglas Emhoff. Emhoff does not appear to have been involved in Herbalife’s affairs, but his work at the firm came to the attention of Christopher Irons, a financial journalist who first reported on the Emhoff-Herbalife connection. “Surely this would seem like some sort of enormous conflict of interest, no?” he wrote in 2015.

The activists asking Harris to investigate Herbalife did not seem to know that she had a personal connection to the the law firm representing the corporation. “That’s news to me,” Wilkes said when told by Yahoo News about Emhoff’s law firm.

The letter to Harris from Judith Fiorentini, the supervising deputy attorney general in the San Diego office, was sent on March 3, 2015. It was signed by two other deputy attorneys general, Sanna Singer and Jinsook Ohta, who like Fiorentini were in the consumer law department of the attorney general’s office. Their memo asked for a “ delegation of investigative authority,” which was to include “the authority to issue and enforce investigative subpoenas.”

Fiorentini wrote that “while Herbalife has outwardly complied with the 1986 injunction ... we believe that it may be directing or enabling the acts of its distributors in ways that violate” that order “and/or consumer laws in general.” She explained that there was reason to believe that Herbalife was empowering its distributors to make false claims about the benefits of becoming a Herbalife distributor. “Herbalife can be liable for consumer violations by its distributors to the extent Herbalife enabled the distributors’ actions,” Fiorentini wrote.

The letter went on to cite precedent for conducting such a probe, and noted that a preliminary investigation had already taken place. That investigation “revealed that Herbalife, at least in publicly available documents, has carefully drawn its corporate policies and conducted itself in a manner that is outwardly consistent with the 1986 Injunction.” Fiorentini thought it was nevertheless necessary to “delve behind what is publicly available to determine if Herbalife is directing or enabling its distributors” to act illegally.

Fiorentini requested two full-time attorneys, three or four legal assistants and, potentially, officers to conduct undercover operations. The letter ended with the pros and cons of such an investigation. Fiorentini was frank about the energy and resources required while also anticipating a “rigorous legal defense” from the company. At the same time, she said that an investigation would “send the message that this office takes continued monitoring and enforcement of its existing judgments very seriously. In addition, it will ensure that Herbalife is held accountable for the acts of its distributors.”

An area of the Herbalife corporate office in Los Angeles in 2016. (Photo: Damian Dovarganes/AP)The contents of the memorandum, or its existence, have not been published before. But it suggests that Harris was made directly aware of the dangers Herbalife may have posed to the people of California. No investigation was opened into Herbalife in response to the memorandum from Fiorentini, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Yahoo News. Nor has Harris publicly said why she chose not to investigate Herbalife, a step that would necessarily lead to prosecution.

A person familiar with deliberations at the attorney general’s office at the time disputes suggestions of inaction by Harris. The person — who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly — said that the California attorney general’s office did help the FTC with its investigation, namely through its corporate fraud division. And the person said that Harris was hesitant to join a fight between billionaires: In response to Ackman’s $1 billion Herbalife short, investor Carl Icahn bet heavily on the company, and the two men began to attack each other sharply on television.

Podesta, the Washington lobbyist whose ex-husband represented Herbalife, donated $1,000 to Harris’s campaign for the U.S. Senate on March 31, 2015, at the end of the same month that had seen the arrival of the letter from the San Diego office, asking for an Herbalife investigation. She donated $4,400 to Harris’s senate campaign the following year. (Podesta had made smaller donations, of $100 and $500, to Harris in 2010 and 2014, respectively. She did not respond to requests for comment.)

That July, Herbalife hired a top Podesta deputy, Eric Rosen, to serve as its top government relations official. The following year, Herbalife paid Heather Podesta $250,000 for her lobbying work.

Harris moved on from her duties as a prosecutor in 2016 when, on the same day that Trump became president, she was elected to serve as California’s junior U.S. senator. She was sworn in the following January and exactly two years later, announced that she was running to oust Trump from the Oval Office.

The FTC won a $200 million settlement from Herbalife in July 2016. Related to that settlement was one with Madigan, the Illinois attorney general, for $3 million. California, which often leads the nation in consumer and environmental regulations, remained on the sidelines.

Vice President Joe Biden administers the Senate oath of office to Kamala Harris as her husband, Douglas Emhoff, holds the Bible in 2017. (Photo: Kevin Wolf/AP)“I wouldn’t limit my disappointment to her,” says Wilkes, the former chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, of Harris. “At least Kamala listened.” Still, he wonders why Madigan could wrest a settlement from Herbalife but Harris could not. “Kamala,” he says with audible disappointment, “should have had that too.”

Since then, however, she has faced questions about whether her progressivism is genuine or only a matter of political expediency. She has yet to explain why she declined to pursue a corporation accused of exploiting her Latino constituents.

Harris was replaced as California’s attorney general by Xavier Becerra, who had formerly represented Los Angeles in the U.S. House of Representatives. Becerra has formerly received significant political donations from Herbalife’s political action group. His office would not say how, if at all, this complicated considerations about opening an investigation into Herbalife.

The attorney general’s press office declined to comment in response to repeated calls and emails from Yahoo News.

Contreras, the Chicago activist, has watched the Harris presidential campaign with skepticism. For her, the decision to go easy on Herbalife is indicative of where Harris’s sympathies lie, and it is not with the downtrodden. Contreras has a simple message for the presidential candidate: “Kamala Harris, shame on you.”

Editors’ note: This article has been updated to clarify the relationship between Heather Podesta and Herbalife, as well as to include the political affiliation of activist Julie Contreras.

[Cautious_Optimist] Hedge Fund idea: Message 31944612

Cautious_Optimist — 12/23/2018 12:50:20 PM

[StockDung] Dan Loeb video says Campbell Soup is ‘Mmm, mmm, bad’ By Carleton English and ...

StockDung — 10/18/2018 2:55:08 PM

Dan Loeb video says Campbell Soup is ‘Mmm, mmm, bad’

By Carleton English and Josh Kosman October 18, 2018 | 1:37pm

See Video: Third Point Presents "Empty the Can"
youtube.com

Forget your momma’s Campbell Soup.

Activist investor Dan Loeb released a four-minute video Thursday to entice mom-and-pop shareholders of Campbell Soup to overhaul its board and “refresh” the company.

The video opens with a housewife making dinner in a 1950s-era kitchen complete with pink appliances as Campbell’s familiar “Mmm, mmm, good” jingle plays in the background.

But the cozy image takes a dark turn after a voice-over declares that the Camden, NJ-based soupmaker’s treatment of shareholders is “Mmm, mmm, bad.”

“It’s time to empty the can, refresh the recipe and restore shareholder value,” Loeb’s Third Point said Thursday in a four-minute video.

Loeb’s plea comes after four descendants of John Dorrance — the inventor of condensed soup and early owner of Campbell — representing nearly 41 percent of shares said Wednesday that they plan to back the current board.

As such, Loeb’s new video looks like a pitch to Campbell’s remaining shareholders, 15 percent of which are thought to be mom-and-pop investors.

Campbell shares ticked up 2.1 percent, to $37.08, in midday trades Thursday.

The hedge fund also mailed out a packet of materials to investors earlier this month. According to one shareholder, the package weighed nearly 7 ounces and included a booklet and an 8-by-11-inch poster with an image of alphabet soup spelling out “Time to #refreshtherecipe.”

Campbell fired back against Third Point’s video Thursday.

“Third Point has failed to present any credible ideas for how it proposes creating value for shareholders. A video is not a plan,” the company said in a statement.

Third Point, which had earlier pushed for a sale of the company, has recently stressed that a turnaround is needed.

“Fixing Campbell is not a simple case of adding a little salt or trying some gluten free noodles. It’s far too late for that,” Third Point said, urging for a complete overhaul of Campbell’s 12-person board.

Third Point’s salt reference may have been a sly nod to fellow activist investor Jeff Smith of Starboard Value, who successfully pushed for change at Olive Garden-parent Darden Group after noting the restaurant chain didn’t salt its pasta water.

Campbell defended its strategy Thursday.
“We are focused on the core issues at hand – executing our plan, turning the business around and maximizing shareholder value,” it said.

FILED UNDER ACTIVIST INVESTORS , CAMPBELL SOUPS , DAN LOEB , SHAREHOLDERS

[StockDung] Dan Loeb confirms he’s pushing Campbell family to sell company By Carleton Eng...

StockDung — 8/9/2018 8:36:04 PM

Dan Loeb confirms he’s pushing Campbell family to sell company

By Carleton English and Josh Kosman August 9, 2018 | 5:38pm

AP

Dan Loeb finally revealed he’s looking for a new recipe for success at Campbell Soup.

The activist hedgie behind Third Point on Thursday announced in a regulatory filing a 5.7 percent stake in the soup maker — and that he is pushing for the company to put itself on the block.

Third Point began ladling Campbell stock into its portfolio in June, according to the filing — weeks after the company’s “disastrous fiscal third quarter” results and the sudden exit of Chief Executive Denise Morrison were revealed.

Campbell said in May that it was initiating a strategic review of the company. That review is expected to be completed on Aug 30.

Third Point — as The Post reported exclusively in July — believes that review should result in the sale of the company.

“The only justifiable outcome of the strategic review is for [Campbell] to be sold to a strategic buyer,” Third Point said in its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The hedge fund didn’t mince words when calling out the failings at the Camden, NJ, company.

Campbell has suffered from “years of abysmal oversight,” “dismal operating performance,” and a “lack of leadership,” the hedge fund said.

Keith McLoughlin has been serving as interim CEO while a search for Morrison’s replacement continues.

“The current CEO vacuum reminds [us] of Ben Franklin’s resonant insight that ‘if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,’” the hedge fund wrote.

Even Third Point — known for its tough talk in activist situations — realizes that it has a difficult task ahead of it. Roughly 40 percent of Campbell’s stock is held by family members, some of whom may be reluctant to sell.

But Third Point has at least one family member in its corner: George Strawbridge, who has a 2.8 percent stake in Campbell, has agreed to work with the activist, the filing said.
Strawbridge “strongly shares our views,” Third Point said.

Campbell acknowledged Third Point’s filing late Thursday and said it looks forward to “engaging with our shareholders on our strategic plan” on Aug 30.

FILED UNDER CAMPBELL'S SOUP , DAN LOEB , HEDGE FUNDS , THIRD POINT

[richardred] Dan Loeb stirring the POT at Campbell's [graphic] nypost.com

richardred — 8/3/2018 10:56:18 AM

Dan Loeb stirring the POT at Campbell's

nypost.com

[richardred] RE-CPB Message 31684762

richardred — 7/3/2018 11:20:34 AM

[2MAR$] How is the Ashtanga Yoga doing Daniel? And hope the acumen, pura vida & vision ...

2MAR$ — 2/3/2018 10:44:03 PM

How is the Ashtanga Yoga doing Daniel? And hope the acumen, pura vida & vision is as clear as it ever was.

May your Kundalini always be rising ... ;-)

[richardred] RE: Nestles Message 31286076

richardred — 9/30/2017 9:59:37 AM

[StockDung] WOW! Hillary now accuses BERNIE SANDERS of Russia Collusion in the election ! ...

StockDung — 9/9/2017 6:49:53 PM

WOW! Hillary now accuses BERNIE SANDERS of Russia Collusion in the election !

TRUMP MAFIA

[StockDung] Charter school foes slam Dan Loeb By Selim Algar August 15, 201...

StockDung — 9/9/2017 5:55:23 PM

Charter school foes slam Dan Loeb

By Selim Algar
August 15, 2017 | 10:29pm

Modal Trigger
Hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb Reuters

Charter-school foes have pounced on Success Academy Chairman Dan Loeb’s racially insensitive criticism of a Westchester politician as a pretext to drain their resources, the school group’s CEO said in a statement Tuesday.

Hedge-fund investor Loeb used offensive language last week to rip state Senate Democratic leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins as politically beholden to teachers unions.

“Meanwhile, hypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses do more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood,” Loeb wrote in a Facebook post that he later deleted and for which he apologized.

In a note to parents and staffers Tuesday, Success CEO Eva Moskowitz reiterated a prior apology for Loeb’s remarks while arguing that anti-charter groups were harnessing the fiasco to advance their agendas.

“Unfortunately, charter-school opponents are now trying to seize upon this incident,” she said. “They are trying to use it to deprive our children of the resources they deserve, arguing that Success Academy ‘should not be receiving any more public funds.’”

Dan Loeb apologizes for racially charged Facebook post

There was no indication from Moskowitz that the controversy would topple Loeb.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, Mayor De Blasio, First Lady Chirlane McCray, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark- Viverito and others have called for Loeb to step down.

Loeb’s comments came in the wake of a prior exchange Stewart-Cousins had with Gov. Cuomo over his suggestion that Independent Democratic leader Jeff Klein was better suited to court suburban votes.

Stewart-Cousins reportedly told Cuomo that his calculation was rooted not in political logic but innate racism toward black women.

[StockDung] Herbalife, Nu Skin Shares Plunge Over Fears of Chinese Crackdown By Nick Turne...

StockDung — 8/15/2017 9:36:45 AM

Herbalife, Nu Skin Shares Plunge Over Fears of Chinese Crackdown

By Nick Turner and Matthew Townsend

August 14, 2017, 3:55 PM EDT

Agency’s statement renews concerns companies will be targeted

Herbalife has faced pyramid-scheme allegations from Ackman

Start your day with what's moving markets in Asia. Sign up here to receive our newsletter.

Shares of Herbalife Ltd., Nu Skin Enterprises Inc. and USANA Health Sciences Inc. tumbled on Monday over concerns that Chinese regulators will crack down on the companies’ marketing practices.

Herbalife plunged as much as 7.8 percent to $60.71, marking the biggest decline in more than two months. Nu Skin fell 9.6 percent to $54.68, while USANA declined 10 percent to $52.85.

The rout followed a statement posted on China’s State Administration for Industry & Commerce website announcing a three-month campaign to police pyramid schemes. Though the agency didn’t name the companies, Herbalife and other so-called multilevel-marketing businesses have faced allegations that they use a pyramid sales model. Herbalife settled a case with the Federal Trade Commission last year that reined in its practices in the U.S.

Herbalife and USANA sell a range of nutritional supplements and other products, while Nu Skin focuses more on beauty items. But all three companies see China as key to their growth, making a potential crackdown especially risky.

Herbalife, the largest member of the trio, has been waging a high-profile battle with billionaire Bill Ackman over whether it’s a pyramid scheme -- an accusation it has repeatedly denied. Ackman, head of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, began his crusade against the nutrition company in late 2012 with a $1 billion bet against Herbalife’s stock.

As part of the FTC settlement last year, Herbalife agreed to revamp its U.S. operations and pay $200 million to refund distributors. The agency stopped short of calling the company a pyramid scheme.

The agreement with regulators obligated Herbalife to start showing that the majority of its U.S. revenue is generated by consumers. Ackman has said that the company’s sales are mostly fueled by Herbalife distributors trying to reach income payouts -- not legitimate demand for its weight-loss shakes and energy drinks.

Herbalife, based in Los Angeles, declined to comment on the statement from Chinese regulators.

[StockDung] Third Point's Dan Loeb Exits SNAP After Just 3 Months: 13F Filing ...

StockDung — 8/14/2017 12:23:43 PM

Third Point's Dan Loeb Exits SNAP After Just 3 Months: 13F Filing

By Nathan Reiff | August 14, 2017 — 11:18 AM EDT

Major Hedge Funds That Bought SNAP May Regret It: 13F Filings

Third Point's Dan Loeb Exits SNAP After Just 3 Months: 13F Filing

), the parent company of popular social media platform Snapchat, debuted its IPO in March of this year to a great deal of fanfare. In fact, many of the most prominent investors in the country scrambled to buy up shares of the new offering. Unfortunately, though, SNAP stock has declined in price significantly, dropping well below the initial IPO price of around $17 per share. As of this writing, SNAP is trading for under $12 per share. Now, as 13F reports become available for top investment firms over the past quarter, it is becoming apparent that some of the investors who were eager to get involved in SNAP when it debuted are now selling out of their positions before the stock price can dip further. Loeb's Third Point Sold Out of SNAP Shares According to a 13F report recently filed for Q2 by Third Point, the hedge fund of billionaire Dan Loeb, the firm sold out of its SNAP position at some point over the course of the second quarter. Although SNAP received a bump in price of 21.5% in May, following the last round of 13F reports, wherein Loeb and others revealed that they had bought into the stock, it has so far declined by about 33% in Q3. Some of the potential reasons for this drop may be the expiration of the lockup period, originally available to early investors, as well as a lackluster earnings report from Q2, according to CNBC.

Loeb had a significant position of SNAP shares, holding 2.25 million shares of the parent company to Snapchat as of the beginning of the second quarter. Clearly, it seems that Loeb has reconsidered his initial investment quite severely, having eliminated the entirety of that position over the course of the previous quarter.

Loeb Reshifts Interest to Dow Chemical Perhaps Loeb used some of the money freed up by sale of the SNAP holdings to buy up about 300,000 shares in Dow Chemical ( DOW

Dow Chemical Co

DOW
63.55
+0.46%

), increasing his firm's holdings to roughly 16 million shares. Dow will finalize its merger with DuPont ( DD

E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co

DD
81.35
+0.47%

) at the end of this month, with spin-off units of the newly combined company appearing over the next year and a half. Loeb also dissolved his position in JPMorgan Chase, but bought up additional shares of Bank of America, increasing his holdings by 1.5 million to 15 million shares total. As with all 13F reports, it's important to keep in mind that Loeb and Third Point are revealing their standings as of the end of June of this year. Much could have changed in the weeks since then, so investors would be wise to remember that 13F reports look backwards to old information. According to Third Point's investor letter, its Offshore Fund returned 10.7% in the first half of 2017, outpacing the S&P 500 by 2.4%.

Read more: Third Point's Dan Loeb Exits SNAP After Just 3 Months: 13F Filing | Investopedia investopedia.com
Follow us: Investopedia on Facebook

[StockDung] Dan Loeb gets hit with FAKE NEWS HEADLINE-> Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, a suppo...

StockDung — 8/11/2017 10:22:51 AM

Dan Loeb gets hit with FAKE NEWS HEADLINE-> Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, a supporter New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, accused the African-American woman who leads the Democrats in the State Senate of having done "more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood." (NY Times)

cnbc.com

Here is what Dan really said: "Thank God for Jeff Klein and those who stand for educational choice and support Charter funding that leads to economic mobility and opportunity for poor knack kids," Mr. Loeb wrote, with "knack" apparently a typographical error for "black." "Meanwhile hypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses do more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood.""

cnbc.com

Daniel Loeb, a Cuomo Donor, Makes Racial Remark About Black Leader
Shane Goldmacher
Published 2 Hours Ago
The New York Times

Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Daniel Loeb

The hedge fund manager Daniel S. Loeb, a prominent supporter of charter schools and a major financial backer of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomoand congressional Republicans, accused the African-American woman who leads the Democrats in the New York State Senate of having done "more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood."

Mr. Loeb made the reference, apparently to the Ku Klux Klan, in a posting on Facebook in response to an article in The New York Times this week in which the Democratic leader, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, confronted Mr. Cuomo about prejudging her based upon race and gender.

In a private meeting last month, The Times reported, Ms. Stewart-Cousins said to Mr. Cuomo during a debate over who best understands suburban voters: "You look at me, Mr. Governor, but you don't see me. You see my black skin and a woman, but you don't realize I am a suburban legislator."

More from The New York Times:
Tensions Flare as Cuomo Confronts Democratic Rift
Investing Short-Term When Stocks Are High? Imagine a Painful Drop
Wall Street's 'Fear Gauge' Skyrockets as Tensions Rise With North Korea

Mr. Loeb weighed in on behalf of Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the leader of a group of Democrats that has split from Ms. Stewart-Cousins.

"Thank God for Jeff Klein and those who stand for educational choice and support Charter funding that leads to economic mobility and opportunity for poor knack kids," Mr. Loeb wrote, with "knack" apparently a typographical error for "black." "Meanwhile hypocrites like Stewart-Cousins who pay fealty to powerful union thugs and bosses do more damage to people of color than anyone who has ever donned a hood."

After The Times reported on his Facebook remarks, Mr. Loeb deleted them late Thursday night.

"I regret the language I used in expressing my passion for educational choice," he said in a statement. "I apologize to Senator Stewart-Cousins and anyone I offended. I have taken down the post from Facebook."

Mr. Klein leads a group of eight Democrats who in 2011 broke away from the main Democratic conference, led by Ms. Stewart-Cousins. Mr. Klein's group, the Independent Democratic Conference, has in the past sided with the Republicans in the Senate to keep Ms. Stewart-Cousins out of the powerful post of majority leader.

Mr. Loeb has been a prominent player in New York politics, as the chairman of the Success Academy charter school network and as a major political donor. In 2015, protesters objecting to Mr. Cuomo's ties to wealthy donors marched outside a fund-raiser that Mr. Loeb hosted for Mr. Cuomo at his home in the Hamptons.

Mr. Loeb and his wife have donated more than $170,000 to Mr. Cuomo in recent years, state records show. He has also supported Republicans, with contributions including $500,000 to a super PAC that supported Jeb Bush in 2015, $150,000 to the Republican National Committee that year and $700,000 to a super PAC supporting House Republicans in 2016.

Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Mr. Cuomo, said, "We have no connection with these comments whatsoever, and in our opinion they are entirely inappropriate and have no place in the public discourse."

[richardred] Billionaire hedge fund manager Loeb on his great year so far: 'Better lucky than...

richardred — 8/8/2017 10:11:44 AM

Billionaire hedge fund manager Loeb on his great year so far: 'Better lucky than right'

Loeb, a widely-followed industry figure who manages $18 billion, placed a number of bets on President Donald Trump's pro-growth agenda for 2017, including tax reform and infrastructure spending.
Trump has done none of those things, yet Third Point was still up 10.7 percent for the year through June.

Activist hedge fund manager Dan Loeb, who's more than doubled the S&P 500's return over the last two decades, is beating the market again this year while most of his big-name peers are struggling.

But the Wall Street titan admitted Thursday his strong performance was partly due to good fortune.

Earlier this year the manager bet big on President Donald Trump's pro-growth economic agenda. The prediction turned out to be wrong, but he made money anyway.

"Better lucky than right. We expected the market to go up, but for different reasons. We thought it would be based on generally positive, growth oriented policies enacted by the administration: lower taxes, infrastructure spending, health care reform, etc. None of these things transpired," Loeb said on the Third Point Reinsurance second-quarter earnings call Thursday.

"What has transpired has been global synchronized economic growth and a very accommodative global monetary structure. So I'm happy with the outcome, the reason for it was different from what we anticipated, but we'll take it. While valuations are getting a little more stretched, we're still finding lots of good things to do in the areas of the market we participate in," he added.

Loeb urges Honeywell to spin-off aerospace unit Friday, 28 Apr 2017 | 4:16 PM ET | 02:12

Loeb's hedge fund Third Point Offshore was up 4.6 percent in the second quarter, bringing its performance through June to 10.7 percent compared with the S&P 500's 8.2 percent return, according to an investor letter. From inception in December 1996 to June 2017 the fund generated annual net returns of 15.8 percent, more than double the market's performance during that time frame.

The hedge fund manager also shared on the call, which areas of the market he is betting against.

"Our short book is performing very well … We're focusing on is structurally challenged companies that are having a very difficult time in the current environment [such as] retailers, consumer brands, energy-related companies and some companies we think have very low quality earnings [that] we think may be playing accounting games."

The firm has $18 billion of assets under management as of late June. Third Point did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In regard to Loeb's investment strategy , Third Point materials describe its philosophy as "event-driven, value-oriented," with an "emphasis on special situation equities." The firm "seeks to identify situations where we anticipate a catalyst will unlock value."

cnbc.com

[StockDung] Snap sinks to its IPO price (SNAP) Seth Archer Jun. 15, 2017, 01:56 PM [graph...

StockDung — 6/15/2017 3:40:45 PM

Snap sinks to its IPO price (SNAP)

Seth Archer
Jun. 15, 2017, 01:56 PM

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, just hit its IPO price of $17.

The company has been on a slide ever since the initial bump following its IPO.

Snap debuted at $17 and first began trading at $24. It reached its all-time high of $27.09 on March 3, a one day after its IPO. It's now down 37% from there.

Many of the banks that underwrote the company's IPO have become bearish on the stock. JPMorgan is perhaps the most notable, as it has been downbeat on the stock almost since launch.

The company is struggling to innovate faster than its competitors. Facebook has been copying features of Snap's core app in the Facebook and Instagram apps. Snap released its Spectacles camera, and recently expanded distribution of the product, but has not seen a significant bump to its bottom line.

Snap executives and company insiders won’t be able to sell their shares until their 150-day lockup period expires on July 30. However, since that's a Sunday, they won't be able to sell shares until Monday, July 31.

Click here to follow the company's share price live... Markets Insider

Read Now: Hedge funds are crushing it with a trade that anyone can replicate >>

See Also: A cryptocurrency for weed is crashing a day after it sponsored Dennis Rodman's trip to North Korea >>

[Mad2] Our dear friend just doubled down on KDMN insiderinsights.com If I understand,...

Mad2 — 3/16/2017 12:43:17 PM

Our dear friend just doubled down on KDMN

insiderinsights.com

If I understand, he gets warrants ($4.5/sh) that expire in 12 months.

Knowing they just refilled the bank account it probably won't get any cheaper

stockcharts.com[PA][D][F1!3!!!2!20]

[StockDung] Herbalife pays up after being accused of pyramid scheme By Carleton English Ja...

StockDung — 1/12/2017 7:29:35 AM

Herbalife pays up after being accused of pyramid scheme

By Carleton English
January 10, 2017 | 11:49pm | Updated

Michael O. Johnson, founder of Herbalife.Getty Images

Checks are in the mail for nearly 350,000 people who said they lost money trying to run an Herbalife business, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday.

The checks are being sent to distributors who paid at least $1,000 to Herbalife between 2009 and 2015 and “got little or nothing back from the company.”

Most of the checks are for between $100 and $500.

In July, the company settled with the FTC to the tune of $200 million, ending a controversy-laden two-year probe into whether it was a pyramid scheme.

Even as the money flowed to victims, critics lashed out at the FTC.

Some Herbalife distributors who recruited other members into the alleged pyramid scheme will not be getting checks even though they themselves were also victims, Julie Contreras of the League of United Latin American Citizens, an advocacy group critical of Herbalife, told The Post.

“Many of the people who have been victimized [by Herbalife] have been revictimized,” Contreras said.

The FTC is providing on their Web site a phone number for distributors who feel they deserve compensation but didn’t get a check.

FILED UNDER CLASS-ACTION LAWSUITS , FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION , HERBALIFE , PYRAMID SCHEMES

[StockDung] Wife could get half of Bill Ackman’s $1.65 billion fortune By Page Six Team Dec...

StockDung — 12/26/2016 12:32:52 PM

Wife could get half of Bill Ackman’s $1.65 billion fortune
By Page Six Team

December 25, 2016 | 7:38pm

Karen Ann Herskovitz and Bill Ackman Getty Images

The soon-to-be ex-wife of billionaire activist investor Bill Ackman could deliver him the ultimate short squeeze — because the divorcing couple has no prenup, Page Six can exclusively reveal.

This means that his wife, Karen Ann Herskovitz, could be entitled to half of his estimated $1.65 billion fortune.

On Friday, Page Six reported that the couple had begun telling friends that they were separating. No divorce paperwork has yet been filed, but it is expected early next year.

One friend told us, “They have been together for a long time — 25 years, and married for 22. They married before he made his fortune. She was by his side and raised their kids while he made the money. There was never any talk of a prenup.” That move could eventually cost Ackman more than his famous bad bet on Valeant.

Other friends insist the Ackman split is amicable and that “this isn’t about money.” But we’ve reported on enough big-money hedge fund divorces to ponder if that position could change in the new year.

The hard-charging Pershing Square founder and his landscape architect wife, with whom he has three daughters, began telling friends via email on Thursday that they have separated.

The email reads: “It saddens us to share that after 25 years together, we are separating. It is an amicable split, and we are making sure that we minimize the impact on our girls. We value your friendship and greatly appreciate your support. Love, Karen and Bill.”

Up for grabs in the divorce is an immense portfolio of property.

In 2014, Ackman bought the $90 million trophy penthouse at the glittering new One57, which he described as “the Mona Lisa of apartments” because it is a one-off masterpiece, which he “bought for fun.” But he doesn’t actually live in it. He and his family reside in a $35 million apartment at the Beresford off Central Park. They also have a waterfront estate in Bridgehampton bought in 2011 for $22 million, plus a second $23.5 million manse nearby.

A spokesman for Ackman didn’t comment.

FILED UNDER BILL ACKMAN , CELEBRITY DIVORCES , DIVORCES

[StockDung] Its official, Herbalife a bunch of CRIMMS->"Feds Hit 'Deceptive' Herbalife With ...

StockDung — 7/16/2016 12:38:09 PM

Its official, Herbalife a bunch of CRIMMS->"Feds Hit 'Deceptive' Herbalife With $200M Fine, Call for Diet Firm to Go Legit"

==============================================================

Feds Hit 'Deceptive' Herbalife With $200M Fine, Call for Diet Firm to Go Legit

By Matthew Mosk
Brian Ross
Jul 15, 2016, 1:08 PM

The Federal Trade Commission announced today that the diet and nutrition company Herbalife will have to pay a $200 million fine and restructure its business in response to allegations of “unfair and deceptive practices.”

The FTC called the settlement a “significant law enforcement action,” but the company claimed it as a victory in its fight against claims it was operating a pyramid-style scheme.

“The company promised people a dream – a chance to change their lives, quit their jobs and gain financial freedom,” FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez told reporters, “but the FTC has charged that this wasn’t true.”

Ramirez said Herbalife was charged with deceiving thousands of people into believing they could make money as “distributors,” or salespeople, of Herbalife products when the only real money was actually in buying the products themselves and then recruiting other salespeople to do the actual selling. When asked by reporters if the Herbalife business model was similar to a pyramid scheme, Ramirez said the FTC was not focused on “labels.”

“Herbalife is going to have to start operating legitimately, making only truthful claims about how much money its members are likely to make, and it will have to compensate consumers for the losses they have suffered as a result of what we charge are unfair and deceptive practices," Ramirez said.

Herbalife was the focus of a year-long ABC News investigation in 2014 in which two reporters went undercover as Herbalife recruits and found a company that has struggled to prevent distributors from embellishing the financial prospects of a sales career there and hyping the health benefits of its products.

ABC News found that nearly 600 independent distributors of the diet and nutrition sales brand Herbalife had been disciplined by the company in 2013 for making medical claims when selling the company’s weight-loss shakes and supplements, despite company policies aimed at preventing such tactics.

In one instance, a Staten Island, N.Y., Herbalife distributor even told a potential customer -- who was actually an ABC News reporter wearing a hidden camera -- that a woman with a brain tumor became symptom free after starting on Herbalife products.

“She used to shake like this because she lost control of her motor skills to the tumor and she said part of her cerebellum was deteriorated,” he said. “If you see her now, she’s like one of us here... Whatever it is that the product did, it helped her a lot.”

Herbalife executives told ABC News at the time that they were "appalled" by the investigation’s findings, and would take pains to prohibit such tactics. The company announced a “significant re-training intiative.”

“In direct response to the interview where Brian Ross brought to light instances of members making unauthorized product claims, the company began a significant re-training initiative,” Herbalife spokeswoman Barb Henderson said in an email then.

Herbalife officials today counted the settlement with the FTC, as well as a $3 million settlement with the Illinois Attorney General, as victories and claimed the settlements were “an acknowledgement that [Herbalife’s] business model is sound,” in the words of Herbalife CEO Michael Johnson.

The settlements also “underscore our confidence in our ability to move forward successfully, otherwise we would not have agreed to the terms,” Johnson said.

In a press release, the company said that it believes “many of the allegations made by the FTC are factually incorrect,” but said it agreed to settle to avoid the financial cost and distraction of “protracted litigation.”

The pyramid scheme claims had fueled a four-year Wall Street feud led by billionaire hedge fund executive Bill Ackman, who bet big that Herbalife’s stock would drop amid the allegations. As recently as earlier this week, Ackman was continuing his series of presentations intended to spur government scrutiny of the company and drive down the stock price.

The company's stock value rose on news of the FTC agreement.

ABC News' Lee Ferran contributed to this report.

[StockDung] Billionaire GOP donor deletes 'lesbian' joke about Hillary Clinton By Annie ...

StockDung — 6/30/2016 5:23:12 PM

Billionaire GOP donor deletes 'lesbian' joke about Hillary Clinton

By Annie Karni

06/25/15 01:27 PM EDT

Hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb — one of the biggest and most feared investors on Wall Street and a vocal backer of same-sex marriage — posted a joke speculating about Hillary Clinton’s sexuality on his personal Facebook page.

“Dear Abby,” he posted May 9. “My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn’t even look for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the bull with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do? Signed Clueless.”

“Dear Clueless,” the post continues, “Grow up and dump him. Good grief woman! You don’t need him anymore! You’re running for President of the United States. Act like one.”

The anti-Clinton diatribe wasn’t Loeb’s own joke or words — it appeared to be a right-wing meme that has been circulating online since Clinton’s first run. The same faux “Dear Abby” column was also posted on the Facebook page of actor Kevin Sorbo, best known for his role as Hercules in the TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”

The resurfacing of the old attack on the Clintons this cycle — on the page of a prominent billionaire — indicates how ugly attacks could get if Hillary Clinton gets into the uncharted territory of a general election.

Loeb, who bundled money for Barack Obama in 2008 before turning on him and backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, has shown interest in a few of the GOP candidates this cycle.

Before Chris Christie became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal, Loeb had publicly touted the New Jersey governor’s leadership style and urged him to run for president. But he’s been silent on Christie since, and has yet to commit publicly to any 2016 candidate.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has been courting Loeb for his recently launched campaign. And last year, Bush headlined a benefit gala chaired by Loeb to raise money for Success Academy Charter Schools.

Loeb promptly deleted the Dear Abby post after POLITICO contacted his office about it.

“This widely circulated, old meme ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently and as soon as I was informed of it, I took it down,” Loeb said in a statement. “ As a longstanding public supporter of gay and women’s rights, it does not represent my views.”

The Clinton campaign declined to comment for this report.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/billionaire-gop-donor-daniel-loeb-hillary-clinton-lesbian-joke-213996#ixzz4D6GlHyrp
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

[StockDung] Anyone know crap when you see it?-> "It all sounds plausible, but suspicions are...

StockDung — 3/19/2016 9:04:24 AM

Anyone know crap when you see it?-> "It all sounds plausible, but suspicions are raised by the fact that Loeb described himself as looking for “discreet fun with 9 or 10” on his profile. Loeb later said that the “field was part of going on the site and I gave a brief line that sounded plausible.”""He also does not explain why he would check his inbox on an account that he never intended to “engage” with anybody on. Ashley Madison data shows that Loeb checked his private messages in December 2013, 8 months after he joined the site."

====================================================================

Billionaire Dan Loeb Used Ashley Madison Account For “Research” Purposes
By Brendan Byrne on August 27, 2015 5:13 pm in Top Stories

Hedge fund investor Dan Loeb openly mocked Hillary Clinton for being married to “a liar and a cheat,” but had an Ashley Madison account himself.

Loeb’s name features among the data released by the Impact Team hackers, who published information that they stole from the infidelity network Ashley Madison. Loeb founded hedge fund Third Point LLC and is an important contributor to the Romney campaign, and has since confirmed that the account was genuine, writes Sam Biddle for Gawker.

Loeb now a vocal opponent of Hillary ClintonAlthough Loeb used to support Obama, he has recently diverted his generosity to Republican candidates and conservative Super PACs. He recently donated a million dollars to American Unity PAC, and $250,000 to the Ending Spending Action Fund, in addition to tens of thousands to the Republican Party itself.

This June he posted a derogatory joke about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on his Facebook page, decrying her relationship with husband Bill Clinton. Loeb removed the post shortly after, telling Politico that it was an “old meme [that] ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently.”

A year before he made that post, Loeb created an account on Ashley Madison. He signed up using his private email account, and the zip code and birthday match Loeb’s own.

Investor says Ashley Madison account was for research purposesWhen Gawker asked Loeb about the account, it received the following statement: “As my family, friends and business colleagues know, I am a prolific web surfer. Did I visit this site to see what it was all about? Absolutely – years ago, at the time I was invested in Yahoo and IAC and was endlessly curious about apps and websites. Did I ever engage or meet with anyone through this site? Never. That was never my intention — as evidenced by the fact that I never provided a credit card to set up an account.”

It all sounds plausible, but suspicions are raised by the fact that Loeb described himself as looking for “discreet fun with 9 or 10” on his profile. Loeb later said that the “field was part of going on the site and I gave a brief line that sounded plausible.”

He also does not explain why he would check his inbox on an account that he never intended to “engage” with anybody on. Ashley Madison data shows that Loeb checked his private messages in December 2013, 8 months after he joined the site.

Tags: Ashley Madison dan loeb Election Facebook hack hedge fund Hillary Clinton infidelity president United States

Sign Up For Our Free Newsletter and like our Facebook page for latest news updates and leaks. ValueWalk’s Under The Radar Hedge Fund Ideas Is Only $49.99 (CLICK HERE! IT'S LIMITED TIME OFFER)

Written by Brendan Byrne While studying economics, Brendan found himself comfortably falling down the rabbit hole of restaurant work, ultimately opening a consulting business and working as a private wine buyer. On a whim, he moved to China, and in his first week following a triumphant pub quiz victory, he found himself bleeding on the floor based on his arrogance. The same man who put him there offered him a job lecturing for the University of Wales in various sister universities throughout the Middle Kingdom. While primarily lecturing in descriptive and comparative statistics, Brendan simultaneously earned an Msc in Banking and International Finance from the University of Wales-Bangor. He's presently doing something he hates, respecting French people. Well, two, his wife and her mother in the lovely town of Antigua, Guatemala. To contact Brendan or give him an exclusive, please contact him at theflask@gmail.com

[StockDung] Building a special ring of fire in Hades for this kind->“This widely circulated,...

StockDung — 3/19/2016 8:51:27 AM

Building a special ring of fire in Hades for this kind->“This widely circulated, old meme ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently and as soon as I was informed of it, I took it down,” Loeb said in a statement. “ As a longstanding public supporter of gay and women’s rights, it does not represent my views.” "

Billionaire GOP donor deletes ‘lesbian’ joke about Hillary Clinton

By Annie Karni

6/25/15 1:27 PM EDT

Hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb — one of the biggest and most feared investors on Wall Street and a vocal backer of same-sex marriage — posted a joke speculating about Hillary Clinton’s sexuality on his personal Facebook page.

“Dear Abby,” he posted May 9. “My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn’t even look for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the bull with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do? Signed Clueless.”

“Dear Clueless,” the post continues, “Grow up and dump him. Good grief woman! You don’t need him anymore! You’re running for President of the United States. Act like one.”

The anti-Clinton diatribe wasn’t Loeb’s own joke or words — it appeared to be a right-wing meme that has been circulating online since Clinton’s first run. The same faux “Dear Abby” column was also posted on the Facebook page of actor Kevin Sorbo, best known for his role as Hercules in the TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”

The resurfacing of the old attack on the Clintons this cycle — on the page of a prominent billionaire — indicates how ugly attacks could get if Hillary Clinton gets into the uncharted territory of a general election.

Loeb, who bundled money for Barack Obama in 2008 before turning on him and backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, has shown interest in a few of the GOP candidates this cycle.

Before Chris Christie became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal, Loeb had publicly touted the New Jersey governor’s leadership style and urged him to run for president. But he’s been silent on Christie since, and has yet to commit publicly to any 2016 candidate.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has been courting Loeb for his recently launched campaign. And last year, Bush headlined a benefit gala chaired by Loeb to raise money for Success Academy Charter Schools.

Loeb promptly deleted the Dear Abby post after POLITICO contacted his office about it.

“This widely circulated, old meme ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently and as soon as I was informed of it, I took it down,” Loeb said in a statement. “ As a longstanding public supporter of gay and women’s rights, it does not represent my views.”

The Clinton campaign declined to comment for this report.

[StockDung] "Before Chris Christie became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal, Loeb had publ...

StockDung — 3/19/2016 8:42:47 AM

"Before Chris Christie became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal, Loeb had publicly touted the New Jersey governor’s leadership style and urged him to run for president. But he’s been silent on Christie since, and has yet to commit publicly to any 2016 candidate. "

Billionaire GOP donor deletes ‘lesbian’ joke about Hillary Clinton

By Annie Karni

6/25/15 1:27 PM EDT

Hedge-fund billionaire Daniel Loeb — one of the biggest and most feared investors on Wall Street and a vocal backer of same-sex marriage — posted a joke speculating about Hillary Clinton’s sexuality on his personal Facebook page.

“Dear Abby,” he posted May 9. “My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and when I confront him, he denies everything. What’s worse, everyone knows that he cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn’t even look for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, cruise around and shoot the bull with his buddies, while I have to work to pay the bills. Since our daughter went away to college he doesn’t even pretend to like me, and even hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do? Signed Clueless.”

“Dear Clueless,” the post continues, “Grow up and dump him. Good grief woman! You don’t need him anymore! You’re running for President of the United States. Act like one.”

The anti-Clinton diatribe wasn’t Loeb’s own joke or words — it appeared to be a right-wing meme that has been circulating online since Clinton’s first run. The same faux “Dear Abby” column was also posted on the Facebook page of actor Kevin Sorbo, best known for his role as Hercules in the TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”

The resurfacing of the old attack on the Clintons this cycle — on the page of a prominent billionaire — indicates how ugly attacks could get if Hillary Clinton gets into the uncharted territory of a general election.

Loeb, who bundled money for Barack Obama in 2008 before turning on him and backing former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012, has shown interest in a few of the GOP candidates this cycle.

Before Chris Christie became embroiled in the Bridgegate scandal, Loeb had publicly touted the New Jersey governor’s leadership style and urged him to run for president. But he’s been silent on Christie since, and has yet to commit publicly to any 2016 candidate.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, meanwhile, has been courting Loeb for his recently launched campaign. And last year, Bush headlined a benefit gala chaired by Loeb to raise money for Success Academy Charter Schools.

Loeb promptly deleted the Dear Abby post after POLITICO contacted his office about it.

“This widely circulated, old meme ended up on my Facebook page inadvertently and as soon as I was informed of it, I took it down,” Loeb said in a statement. “ As a longstanding public supporter of gay and women’s rights, it does not represent my views.”

The Clinton campaign declined to comment for this report.

[StockDung] Why does Dan hate women? "Loeb’s Third Point didn’t nominate a woman for any of ...

StockDung — 3/19/2016 8:37:44 AM

Why does Dan hate women? "Loeb’s Third Point didn’t nominate a woman for any of the 12 directorships for which it put forth a candidate. Eleven of its 12 nominees got seats."

================================================================

Activists From Icahn to Loeb Overlook Women for Board Positions

By Daniel McDonald -
March 8, 201

Carl Icahn has nominated 42 people to fill 94 board seats at public companies ranging from EBay Inc. to Herbalife Ltd. in the past five years. Only one of them was a woman.

That’s been the pattern among activist investors, including Dan Loeb and his Third Point Partners fund and Jeffrey Ubben of ValueAct Capital Management. Since the beginning of 2011, five of the biggest U.S. activist funds have sought at least 174 board positions and landed 108, yet nominated women just 11 times, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The women candidates got eight seats, or 7 percent of the total.

At Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies over the same period, about 26 percent of director openings, or 446 seats, were filled by women, according to executive recruiter Spencer Stuart Inc. Women now comprise 19 percent of directors at S&P 500 companies.

Activists increasingly are putting loyalists in boardrooms to agitate behind closed doors for asset sales, cost cuts, buybacks and other ways to improve financial results. One topic they’re not bringing to the table is diversity, even though more boards than ever want a mix of women and men as well races and nationalities.

“That’s where the world is going, it’s about more input, not less,” Beth Comstock, a vice chair of General Electric Co. and a director at Nike Inc., said in an interview. “You want more diverse perspectives to advise you, to help represent the shareholders.”

Icahn doesn’t agree with the notion that he hasn’t supported women on boards.

“There’s a much bigger picture to consider than only the candidates nominated to seats recently,” he said. “We’ve worked with many, many boards over the years and in a lot of cases supported women on them. In some cases, we fought hard to keep them because they were so capable.”

Spokesmen for the other funds, which also include Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp., declined to comment.

Directors representing activists have sought and in some cases won significant changes at companies, including the replacement of top executives. Icahn persuaded Cheniere Energy Inc.’s board in December to oust founder and Chief Executive Officer Charif Souki after a disagreement about the company’s strategy.

“Activists care about one thing — finding undervalued companies and then putting in people they think can create the best value for them and other shareholders,” said Ken Squire, who runs the 13D Activist Fund, which invests in selected U.S.-listed target companies, and website 13D Monitor. “Whether it’s women or men, they aren’t nominating slouches.”

Still, they’ve have had a tough time boosting results. Since the 13D Activist Fund started in December 2011, it has underperformed the S&P 500 Index. The fund lost 11 percent in 2015 compared with a gain of 1.4 percent for the index, including dividends. This year it is down 1.2 percent compared with a 1.6 percent decline for the benchmark.

Douglas Chia, executive director of the Conference Board’s Governance Center, a research arm of the business group, said companies targeted by activists would benefit from having more women directors.

“If you believe that diversity on boards is critical for long-term sustainable growth, then you have to wonder whether activists care about this — or simply want to get the company’s stock price up quickly,” Chia said. “It’s a serious issue at a time when most executives and directors believe you need boardroom diversity to avoid getting stuck in blind spots.”

To be sure, activists usually seek board nominees with particular business experience, said Eleazer Klein, co-chair of Schulte Roth & Zabel’s shareholder-activism practice.

“They need candidates with long histories aligned with the campaigns they’re mounting, and that may be why they’re trailing companies” in putting women on boards, he said.

The five firms surveyed are among the biggest activist funds in the U.S. They each manage at least $18 billion of assets, including significant investments in companies in which they’re seeking to prod management. The numbers of candidates are based on publicly disclosed nominations, appointments and agreements. They include people who got board seats as the result of an agreement without a formal nomination process.

Pershing Square recommended three women, who comprised 13 percent of the 23 directorships it sought, the highest percentage of the funds surveyed. The company won 17 board seats. One woman, Rebecca MacDonald, founder of natural gas and electricity retailer Just Energy Group Inc., joined the board of Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. Two others, Betsy Atkins and Cathleen Black, didn’t win seats on the board of Allergan Plc.

Icahn Associates Holding, which nominated the most directors over the past five years, won 45 of the 94 board positions sought. Among the 42 people he put forward as candidates, only one was a woman, Courtney Mather, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. head of U.S. loan trading. She was nominated for four directorships and got seats at three companies — CVR Refining LP, CVR Energy Inc. and Freeport-McMoRan Inc.

Loeb’s Third Point didn’t nominate a woman for any of the 12 directorships for which it put forth a candidate. Eleven of its 12 nominees got seats.

ValueAct had one woman, Wendy Lane, a former managing director of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, among its 15 nominees. She was appointed to MSCI Inc.’s board last year.

Elliott Management got 20 of its 30 nominees elected to board seats. Three of the successful candidates were women.

GE’s Comstock said she was surprised by the small number of women nominated by activist investors.

“We should have more women in key leadership positions, whether it’s government, business or academia,” she said.

More women on boards and in senior management can increase profitability, according to research by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Ernst & Young LLP. The February study of more than 21,000 publicly traded companies in 91 countries found that those with at least 30 percent women directors and executives could add as much as 6 percentage points to net margins.

“If you exclude your talent base from the benefits of hiring and deploying and making women successful, you’re going to do less well than businesses that do a better job on that front,” said Blythe Masters, CEO of blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings LLC, board chair at Santander Consumer USA Holdings and a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive.

[StockDung] Ackman takes $1B hit as Valeant tumbles 49% By Post Staff Report Marc...

StockDung — 3/15/2016 2:00:19 PM

Ackman takes $1B hit as Valeant tumbles 49%

By Post Staff Report
March 15, 2016 | 11:03am

Modal Trigger
Bill Ackman Photo: AP

Somebody give Bill Ackman an aspirin.

Better make it a double.

Shares of the beleaguered hedge fund mogul’s favorite pharmaceutical giant are getting ripped to shreds Tuesday morning, tumbling nearly 50 percent to a more than four-year low after it reported a trifecta of disappointing news:

First quarter profits will be in the range of $1.30 to $1.55 a share, down from a previous forecast of $2.35 to $2.55. Revenue in the three-month period will total $2.3 billion to $2.4 billion — down from a previous estimate that ranged up to $3.1 billion.
In the fourth quarter, Valeant surprised Wall Street by reporting a loss of $336.4 million. Adjusted earnings came in at $2.50 a share, below expectations.
Valeant also shocked investors by saying that if it doesn’t file its already delayed annual report by April 29 it will face a potential “event of default.”

Ackman, whose Pershing Square hedge fund owns 30.7 million shares, or 9 percent, of Valeant, took a paper loss of more than $1.045 billion in mid-afternoon trading.

Valeant shares tumbled to $35.00 in heavy trading — down 81 percent in the last year.

Share this:

Filed under bill ackman , valeant pharmaceuticals

[StockDung] Icahn, Loeb and Other Activists Overlook Women for Board Seats [graphic] By Bra...

StockDung — 3/8/2016 1:42:57 PM

Icahn, Loeb and Other Activists Overlook Women for Board Seats

By Brandon Kochkodin, Carol Hymowitz, Stephanie Ruhle 8 hours ago

. View photo Carl Icahn. Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg

Carl Icahn has nominated 42 people to fill 94 board seats at public companies ranging from EBay Inc. to Herbalife Ltd. in the past five years. Not a single one was a woman.

Other activist investors, including Dan Loeb and his Third Point Partners fund and Jeffrey Ubben of ValueAct Capital Management, haven’t done much better. Since the beginning of 2011, five of the biggest U.S. activist funds have sought at least 174 board positions and landed 108, yet nominated women just seven times, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The women candidates got five seats, or 5 percent of the total.

At Standard & Poor’s 500 Index companies over the same period, about 26 percent of director openings, or 446 seats, were filled by women, according to executive recruiter Spencer Stuart Inc. Women now comprise 19 percent of directors at S&P 500 companies.

More from Bloomberg.com: The Risk I Will Not Take

Activists increasingly are putting loyalists in boardrooms to agitate behind closed doors for asset sales, cost cuts, buybacks and other ways to improve financial results. One topic they’re not bringing to the table is diversity, even though more boards than ever want a mix of women and men as well races and nationalities.

“That’s where the world is going, it’s about more input, not less,” Beth Comstock, a vice chair of General Electric Co. and a director at Nike Inc., said in an interview. “You want more diverse perspectives to advise you, to help represent the shareholders.”

More from Bloomberg.com: Iron Ore Jumps Most on Record as Market Goes 'Berserk'

‘Bigger Picture’Icahn doesn’t agree with the notion that he hasn’t supported women on boards.

“There’s a much bigger picture to consider than only the candidates nominated to seats recently,” he said. “We’ve worked with many, many boards over the years and in a lot of cases supported women on them. In some cases, we fought hard to keep them because they were so capable.”

Elissa Doyle, a spokeswoman for Loeb’s Third Point, which didn’t nominate a woman for any of 12 directorships it sought, said the firm played a role in bringing Marissa Mayer to Yahoo! Inc. as chief executive officer in 2012.

More from Bloomberg.com: Americans Really Don't Like Immigration, New Survey Finds

“Our slate at Yahoo quickly recruited and hired Marissa Mayer, who was the youngest woman ever named CEO of a major technology company,” Doyle wrote in an e-mail. “As engaged investors, we are always on the lookout for qualified candidates -- regardless of gender -- to advocate for shareholders’ rights in either director or executive roles.”

Spokesmen for the other funds, which also include Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp., declined to comment.

Activist DirectorsDirectors representing activists have sought and in some cases won significant changes at companies, including the replacement of top executives. Icahn persuaded Cheniere Energy Inc.’s board in December to oust founder and Chief Executive Officer Charif Souki after a disagreement about the company’s strategy.

“Activists care about one thing -- finding undervalued companies and then putting in people they think can create the best value for them and other shareholders,” said Ken Squire, who runs the 13D Activist Fund, which invests in selected U.S.-listed target companies, and website 13D Monitor. “Whether it’s women or men, they aren’t nominating slouches.”

Still, they’ve had a tough time boosting results. Since the 13D Activist Fund started in December 2011, it has underperformed the S&P 500 Index. The fund lost 11 percent in 2015 compared with a gain of 1.4 percent for the index, including dividends. This year it is down 1.2 percent compared with a 1.6 percent decline for the benchmark.

Douglas Chia, executive director of the Conference Board’s Governance Center, a research arm of the business group, said companies targeted by activists would benefit from having more women directors.

“If you believe that diversity on boards is critical for long-term sustainable growth, then you have to wonder whether activists care about this -- or simply want to get the company’s stock price up quickly,” Chia said. “It’s a serious issue at a time when most executives and directors believe you need boardroom diversity to avoid getting stuck in blind spots.”

Millennials, XersTo be sure, activists usually seek board nominees with particular business experience, said Eleazer Klein, co-chair of Schulte Roth & Zabel’s shareholder-activism practice.

“They need candidates with long histories aligned with the campaigns they’re mounting, and that may be why they’re trailing companies” in putting women on boards, he said.

Carla Harris, vice chairman of global wealth management at Morgan Stanley, said more women will make their way to boardrooms as younger generations rise in the workplace.

“The more data that comes out that talks about the outperformance of diverse boards, the more you’ll see change,” she said Tuesday on Bloomberg Television. “There are more women, especially among the millennials and the Xers, who are getting opportunities earlier to lead.”

Pershing SquareThe five firms surveyed are among the biggest activist funds in the U.S. They each manage at least $18 billion of assets, including significant investments in companies in which they’re seeking to prod management. The numbers of candidates are based on publicly disclosed nominations, appointments and agreements. They include people who got board seats as the result of an agreement without a formal nomination process.

Pershing Square recommended three women, who comprised 13 percent of the 23 directorships it sought, the highest percentage of the funds surveyed. The company won 17 board seats. One woman, Rebecca MacDonald, founder of natural gas and electricity retailer Just Energy Group Inc., joined the board of Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. Two others, Betsy Atkins and Cathleen Black, didn’t win seats on the board of Allergan Plc.

Icahn Associates Holding, which nominated the most directors over the past five years, won 45 of the 94 board positions sought. Among the 42 people he put forward as candidates, not one was a woman.

ValueAct had one woman, Wendy Lane, a former managing director of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, among its 15 nominees. She was appointed to MSCI Inc.’s board last year.

Elliott Management got 20 of its 30 nominees elected to board seats. Three of the successful candidates were women.

‘More Women’GE’s Comstock said she was surprised by the small number of women nominated by activist investors.

“We should have more women in key leadership positions, whether it’s government, business or academia,” she said.

More women on boards and in senior management can increase profitability, according to research by the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Ernst & Young LLP. The February study of more than 21,000 publicly traded companies in 91 countries found that those with at least 30 percent women directors and executives could add as much as 6 percentage points to net margins.

“If you exclude your talent base from the benefits of hiring and deploying and making women successful, you’re going to do less well than businesses that do a better job on that front,” said Blythe Masters, CEO of blockchain startup Digital Asset Holdings LLC, board chair at Santander Consumer USA Holdings and a former JPMorgan Chase & Co. executive.

Updates with Third Point comment in ninth paragraph.

More from Bloomberg.com

[StockDung] Carl Icahn is having a terrible day [graphic] By Linette Lopez ...

StockDung — 2/8/2016 2:51:04 PM

Carl Icahn is having a terrible day

By Linette Lopez 3 hours ago
(Dealbook Conference)
Monday's ugly open is turning into an especially horrible experience for billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

Icahn holds 73 million shares of Chesapeake Energy, which fell more than 50% on a news report that it had hired a team of lawyers to restructure its debt.

The stock, which has been halted, is down 64% year-to-date.

Icahn started buying commodities and energy stocks like Chesapeake in earnest last summer, growing his stake in Cheniere and buying an 8.5% stake in the miner Freeport-McMoRan.

As Business Insider's Portia Crowe pointed out last month, that hasn't worked out so well for him in general. Take those two stocks alone as an example:

Cheniere fell 6.25% in Monday's trading and is down 35% year-to-date.Freeport-McMoRan is up 1.23% in Monday's trading but is down 14% for the year.As of September, energy stocks were the third-largest sector holding in Icahn's portfolio.

[StockDung] Einhorn Under Pressure as Greenlight Shrinks by $3.2 Billion Simone Foxman ...

StockDung — 2/2/2016 6:45:06 AM

Einhorn Under Pressure as Greenlight Shrinks by $3.2 Billion

Simone Foxman SimoneFoxman
February 2, 2016 — 5:00 AM EST

Investors pull 5% of firm assets as main fund falls 20.4%

Einhorn vows he will stay the course with value strategy

Investors in Greenlight Capital showed the limits of their faith in the prowess of David Einhorn after his hedge fund’s worst underperformance ever.

The firm lost $3.2 billion in assets last year as its main fund plunged 20.4 percent, while the stock market rose 1.4 percent including reinvested dividends. Even as Einhorn managed to avoid a large-scale exodus of clients, investors pulled at least $600 million from the firm, or 5 percent of assets, according to calculations based on the latest available data.

David Einhorn
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
The numbers highlight the pressure Einhorn faces to prove he can navigate a turnaround. Other firms, such as Fortress Investment Group and Bain Capital, had to shutter hedge funds after similar investment losses. Greenlight gained 1.4 percent in January as global stock markets slumped, a glimmer of hope for the fund’s investors.

“His investors will give him some additional time to feel out whether or not his losses are recoverable,” said Brian Shapiro, founder of Simplify LLC, which collects and analyzes hedge fund returns. "The question is what happens in the next two quarters."

Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for Greenlight with Sard Verbinnen & Co., declined to comment.

Fortress liquidatedits macro business, which oversaw $2.3 billion as of June, after Michael Novogratz’s flagship fund fell by more than 17 percent in the first three quarters of 2015. Bain said in October that it was shuttingits Absolute Return Capital fund, which had about $2.2 billion as of Aug. 1. The fund had declined 13 percent in the first seven months of 2015, setting up its fourth straight losing year.

Greenlight has several advantages. The hedge fund has accumulated roughly 800 investors since it started in 1996, and they have enjoyed average annual returns of 16.5 percent, according to the firm’s presentation to investors on Jan. 19. Some 30 percent of the firm’s outside assets are locked up in contracts or vehicles that made withdrawal unlikely or impossible at the end of 2015. If clients were to pull out, getting back in is difficult: The fund rarely raises new money.

Greenlight’s RedemptionsMost of the drop in Greenlight’s assets -- from $11.8 billion at the start of 2015 to $8.6 billion this year -- is commensurate with declines in performance, according to Bloomberg calculations based on fund returns disclosed in the presentation. At least $600 million of the drop can’t be explained by performance and is probably the result of redemptions, using conservative assumptions. The actual number may be higher.

At the presentation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Einhorn described withdrawals as minimal, according to a person who attended.

Greenlight aims to earn 15 percentage points of alpha, or returns exceeding benchmarks, plus 30 percent of the gains in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index each year. The fund didn’t come close to reaching that annual goal last year as three of its biggest long bets -- Consol Energy Inc., Micron Technology Inc. and SunEdison Inc. -- dropped 60 percent or more last year.

Staying the CourseEinhorn has publicly admitted to making misjudgments. He called last year’s losses "ordinary risks that didn’t work out well," according to the presentation. He told investors that the firm will not make any significant changes, according to the person at the meeting.

The large number of individual investors in Einhorn’s main fund adds to its stability. It started with $900,000 in 1996, a time when high net-worth individuals rather than institutional investors such as pensions were the most prominent backers of hedge funds. Even today, after years of gains, each of Greenlight’s approximately 800 clients -- excluding separate vehicles that invest in the firm -- has an average of less than $10 million invested in the fund, according to an analysis of presentation data.

That’s a stark contrast with newer hedge funds, which often rely on investments of $100 million or more, making them more vulnerable to the fickle mood of a single client. At Claren Road Asset Management, which started in 2006, withdrawal requests from a few large pensions like Illinois Teachers’ Retirement System and Employees Retirement System of Texas have helped cut assets to $1.25 billion at the start of this year from $8.5 billion in September 2014.

When it raised money more recently, Greenlight ensured it could follow its strategy without having to worry about quarterly or monthly returns. More than $1 billion in money raised from new and old investors in late 2014 is subject to a 25-month lock-up and a penalty of 5 percent if clients withdraw cash in fewer than three years.

Captive MoneyIn addition, the firm manages a portfolio, worth $1.1 billion at the end of December, for its Cayman Islands-based Greenlight Capital Re Ltd. The publicly traded reinsurer, set up in 2007 to offer retail investors tax-friendly access to the hedge fund, is under contract to be invested in the Greenlight fund and pay fees to the manager until at least the end of 2016, according to a filing. The firm also oversees a $882 million fund of hedge funds, which invests 24 percent of its assets in the main Greenlight strategy.

Einhorn’s investors do get a break on fees in down years. They pay 10 percent of performance gains to Greenlight, rather than 20 percent, until the fund recoups 150 percent of its losses. After losing money in 2008, Greenlight didn’t return to earning normal fees until early 2011, according to the presentation.

At the January meeting, Greenlight told investors it sees opportunities in distressed debt and in value stocks it thinks are cheap. It’s looking to short equipment providers and financials that it believes will suffer as the commodity super cycle ends.

"There is good reason to think the environment will change," the firm said in the presentation.

[StockDung] One ugly chart shows how Bill Ackman's investments have been decimated [graphic...

StockDung — 1/27/2016 10:25:27 AM

One ugly chart shows how Bill Ackman's investments have been decimated

By Julia La Roche 1 hour ago

(Thomson Reuters)
File photo of William Ackman, founder and CEO of hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, speaks to audience about Herbalife company in New York.

Hedge fund titan Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Holdings, the fund's publicly traded vehicle, suffered its worst year in history, falling 20.5% in 2015.

It was a year Ackman "will not forget," according to the fund's fourth-quarter investor letter.

The fund was dragged down by Canadian drugmaker Valeant Pharmaceuticals. The stock's massive decline resulted from scrutiny in Washington over drug-price increases and accusations from a short-seller. Valeant has denied any wrongdoing.

It wasn't just Valeant, though. All of Ackman's long stock positions got brutalized in 2015, and they're continuing to get clobbered in 2016. Pershing Square Holdings was last down 14.5% through January 19.

Ackman, a well-known activist investor, makes large, concentrated bets in a handful companies.

"While our portfolio is highly concentrated, we are highly diversified in the industries in which we invest: sweet snacks and chewing gum, industrial gases, real estate, specialty pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals, frozen foods, animal health, housing finance, railroading, and quick service restaurants. One would not expect a substantially greater than market value decline in our portfolio due to recent company-specific and macro events as has occurred since August," Ackman wrote.

The fund's five largest holdings include Valeant Pharmaceuticals, Air Products & Chemicals, Canadian Pacific, Mondelez, and Zoetis.

Ackman is also an investor in Platform Specialty Products, which has dropped 42% this year. Meanwhile, Howard Hughes Corp, another one of his long equity holdings, has fallen about 16%.

Here's a chart showing the performance of those positions.

View gallery

.

(Pershing Square Holdings)

Ackman's only short is Herbalife, a multilevel marketing company that sells weight-loss shakes. Ackman has been crusading against Herbalife since December 2012 because he believes the company is a "pyramid scheme." He's betting that the stock goes to $0.

Shares of Herbalife have fallen more than 14% this year.

[StockDung] Progressive Group Takes Aim at Hedge Fund Managers By Ross Barkan • 03/18/15...

StockDung — 1/20/2016 1:18:19 PM

Progressive Group Takes Aim at Hedge Fund Managers
By Ross Barkan • 03/18/15 5:12pm

<img class="size-full wp-image-487148" src="https://nyoobserver.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/yoga-loeb.png?w=635" alt="A meme from Hedge Clippers mocking Daniel Loeb's love of yoga and conservative politics. " title="Progressive Group Takes Aim at Hedge Fund Managers" />A meme from Hedge Clippers mocking Daniel Loeb’s love of yoga and conservative politics.

A new left-leaning organization is hoping to arouse populist ire at the Republican-tied titans of industry.

Hedge Clippers, a group backed by several liberal community organizing groups, is undertaking a campaign to highlight how billionaires like Leonard Litwin, Paul Tudor Jones and Daniel Loeb affect the political system through hefty campaign donations and allegedly undermine progressive causes–even if, in some cases, they support priorities of the left.

Founded in February, the organization is sending activists aligned with labor-tied groups like New York Communities for Change, Alliance for Quality Education and Strong Economy for All to protests while releasing heavily footnoted reports on their billionaire targets. Next up is Mr. Loeb, a hedge fund manager and founder of Third Point LLC.

“Our aspiration is to work toward significant changes in both politics and the economy,” said Michael Kink, the executive director of Strong Economy for All. “In the Gilded Age, progressives didn’t gain ground until they helped the public understand who the robbers barons were and what they were doing.”

In their latest paper, set to be released tomorrow, Mr. Loeb is blasted for funneling about $1.7 million to political candidates in New York State, much of it to Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Republican State Senate majority. The report also mocks Mr. Loeb, a Yoga devotee, for his materialist pursuits, like a 200-foot yacht.

“Besides glitzy apartments and mega-yachts, Dan Loeb has developed a penchant for supporting right-wing politicians and other officials who put Wall Street’s interests ahead of Main Street’s interests,” the report reads. “This kind of political investment pays off for Loeb–the Republican-led Senate blocks all efforts to close the carried interest loophole, levy a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on financial speculators’ stock transactions, or assess other taxes and fees on hedge fund managers and billionaires that would shrink the inequality gap in New York State.”

Mr. Loeb declined to comment.

The report faults Mr. Loeb for donating more than $1 million to the pro-charter school political action committee New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany. Mr. Loeb sits on the board Success Academy Charter Schools. Teachers’ unions have been long opposed to the privately-run public schools.

Hedge Clippers has national aspirations, those close to the group say. In the future, papers and protests are planned for Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie, along with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a centrist Democrat currently battling a liberal challenger in a runoff.

“The triangulating Clinton politics is not necessarily something the public is willing to stand for anymore,” Mr. Kink said.