- Cohen Revamps Investment Strategies [Steve Cohen, SAC Capital]
- Is China ripe for leveraged buyouts?
- Sex & Sensibility on Sirius
- $200M Phone Charge
- Chanos Forges Hedge-Fund Lobby
- How RIM dispute was resolved; 'No screaming or yelling this time around'
- BNP Paribas set to expand in Britain
Cohen Revamps Investment Strategies - Institutional Investor
Renowned hedge fund manager Steven Cohen has quietly revamped SAC Capital Management. Two subsidiaries--multi-strategy shop CR Intrinsic Investors and Sigma Capital Management, a type of seeder platform--have moved to the forefront of the firm's growth plans. Calls to SAC were not returned.
Intrinsic trades around core holdings, while SAC was more diversified. With the proliferation of hedge funds, Cohen's view is that the opportunities in short-term trading have diminished. "Now he's like 'what is the thesis that is going to play out?' The idea is because he has this big research staff he can pull this off," said one observer.
The SAC flagship, with an estimated $4 billion of insider money--no outside investors--will be used mainly to fund the firm's seed platforms, which are not open to outside investors either. Managers at Sigma and elsewhere trade within a sector mandate provided by Cohen....
Is China ripe for leveraged buyouts? - FinanceAsia.com
Mark your calendar, this is the year for LBOs in China.
Could this be the year when leveraged buyouts (LBOs) become common place in China?Lawyers at Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker, who advise on such deals, say 2006 may be a big year for the LBO scene in the mainland.
They reckon that as foreign investors vie to put money and their expertise in Chinese companies, there is mounting interest in access to a broader range of financing options to put their plans to work. And that means LBOs are on the table.
“I’m hearing that there are lots of deals in the pipeline,” says Brett King, a leveraged finance specialist and partner at Paul Hastings in Hong Kong. “So it's reasonable to forecast there will be about 10 significant LBO transactions, by that I mean of at least $100 million in total debt, coming out of the PRC market over the next two years.”
Given that Paul Hastings has one of the largest full-service, multi-jurisdictional legal practices in China, with over 85 lawyers in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, the firm is in the position to hear the gossip.
Of course, how “pure” those LBOs are remains to be seen. A leveraged buyout involves the takeover of a company, or the acquisition of a controlling interest in a company, using a significant amount of borrowed money where the target company’s assets often serve as collateral for the loans. It is also non-recourse debt, so the lender assumes a substantial portion of the business risk. Typically LBOs are all done on-shore, but in China, transactions that have thus far been labelled LBOs haven’t quite fit that bill – so it’s an evolving universe on the mainland at the moment.
King points out that JPMorgan Partners’ acquisition in 2004 of Sanda Kan, one of the world’s leading hobby train manufacturers, is commonly cited as a landmark leveraged finance deal and indeed often referred to as “China’s first LBO.”
But while almost all of Sanda Kan’s assets were in China, it was incorporated in Hong Kong and all the debt was raised in Hong Kong under local law. Thus, critics dismiss Sanda Kan as an LBO of a Hong Kong company that had substantial PRC assets and business activities.
The Carlyle Group’s pending purchase of 85% of Xugong is another deal touted as “China’s first LBO,” but rival private equity funds counter that the financiers lent money to a Cayman Islands company, which then made shareholder loans to the PRC operating entity.
Sex & Sensibility on Sirius - New York Daily News
'Sex and the City' writer Candace Bushnell joins Sirius.
Carrie Bradshaw, meet Howard Stern.
Candace Bushnell, the author who spawned Bradshaw, "Sex and the City," and a whole generation of women talking frankly about sex, is joining Stern at Sirius Satellite Radio."Candace Bushnell's Sex, Success, and Sensibility," a weekly, four-hour talk show, will debut this spring on Sirius Stars Channel 102, Sirius is set to announce today.
The live call-in chatfest will look to explore what women think about men, relationships and their careers.
Special guests will be invited to take listeners' calls.
"It's really about the challenges, dreams and fears of contemporary, modern women," Bushnell told the Daily News....
$200M Phone Charge - New York Post
Boutique investment bank Evercore Partners is in line to grab a slice of the roughly $200 million in fees Wall Street stands to rake in for brokering the mega-deal between AT&T and BellSouth Corp.
Run by legendary deal maker and former Clinton administration official Roger Altman, Evercore joined Lehman Brothers and Rohatyn Associates in advising AT&T.
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup advised BellSouth.
Although payments to investment banks are rarely disclosed, sources said the total fees on this acquisition could top $200 million.
Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse Group took in $53 million in fees for advising AT&T on its $24 billion sale to SBC Communications and that was only two of the six banks involved in the deal, according to Dealogic....
Chanos Forges Hedge-Fund Lobby - Wall Street Journal
James Chanos, president of New York hedge fund Kynikos Associates and a well-known short-seller, wants a seat at the table.
Mr. Chanos has rounded up about 12 hedge-fund advisers representing $20 billion in assets under management to form the Coalition of Private Investment Companies, an advocacy group that he will lead.The goal of the nonprofit group is to influence policy makers, lawmakers and regulators on how the hedge-fund industry works at a time when the private investment pools -- traditionally for the wealthy, but broadening to smaller investors -- are under the microscope. Regulators and policy makers are grappling with the role of hedge funds in the marketplace, the rise of activist hedge-fund managers, and the risk they might pose.
The government's interest in hedge funds has grown as the funds gain clout in corporate boardrooms and reach into the pockets of more investors. Many small investors have greater exposure to hedge funds through pension and retirement plans. The industry controls $1 trillion in assets, according to recent estimates.
Last month, hedge-fund advisers were required to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, opening themselves to periodic reviews and compliance checks. More recently, the role of stock-research firms and short-sellers has come under fire for potential market manipulation.
Mr. Chanos declined to identify members of the group, although a person familiar with the effort said they are mostly managers who buy long and short positions in stock....
How RIM dispute was resolved; 'No screaming or yelling this time around' - Financial Post
Two new Research In Motion Ltd. lawyers, three long days of negotiations, a lot of concessions and "lousy sandwiches."
That's what it took to end the BlackBerry maker's bitter legal dispute with NTP Inc. on Friday, which threatened to turn off the company's popular e-mail devices in the United States.
Marty Glick and Ron Star, lawyers with Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin in San Francisco representing RIM, set the stage for a settlement on Wednesday last week when they offered NTP a "no strings attached" clause to any cash offer, NTP told the Financial Post after accepting the US$612.5-million settlement.
Previously, the wireless e-mail device maker had offered NTP a lump sum payment that could have been retracted if the company's controversial patents were thrown out by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as part of an ongoing review process, the patent holding company said.
"It was clear very quickly that we were in real negotiations," said Don Stout, an NTP co-founder and patent lawyer. "They set a different tone from RIM's previous lawyers."
Mr. Glick and his associate Mr. Star became RIM's lead negotiators back in June after a US$450-million settlement with NTP fell apart. Messrs. Glick and Star assumed the negotiating role from Henry Bunsow, a partner with Howrey LLP, who continued on as RIM's lead attorney in the Virginia court proceedings versus NTP.
NTP lawyer Jim Wallace said a phone call with Mr. Glick a week ago today led him to believe a deal could be forged even though the companies publicly traded barbs in separate press releases the same day.
"There was no screaming or yelling this time around," he said of the negotiations last year that were supposed to close the first deal. "Marty Glick and his team added a level of professionalism that wasn't there before. They were instrumental in setting the pace."....
BNP Paribas set to expand in Britain - Times Online UK
BNP PARIBAS, the French bank, confirmed that it “wants to be more British”, as new research showed that it has risen from 49th to third in the European mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory league in the first two months of the year.
Thierry Varene, BNP’s global head of corporate finance, said that he wanted to increase the workforce in the bank’s London office by 40 per cent in an effort to win more UK business. “Britain is the largest market in Europe and we want to strengthen our UK team,” M Varene said. “We want to be more British. We have been progressing in the UK through cross-border mergers involving British companies and by working with private equity firms, but we lack depth there.”....
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