Christopher Hohn’s London-based hedge fund firm more than doubled its profits but cut back on the amount that it gave to his ex-wife’s charity, according to a report in London newspaper the Telegraph. The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) reported a pre-tax profit of £68.7 million — or $107.8 million — for the year that ended in February 2014, compared with £31.5 million, or $49.4 million, in the prior year, the newspaper reports. TCI’s parent company, TCI Fund Holdings, reported operating profits of £72 million, way up from £44.6 million the previous year.
However, CIFF UK Trading, a subsidiary of his ex-wife Jamie Cooper-Hohn’s charity, received £4.9 million — less than half the £14.3 million received in the previous period, ending February 2013. TCI’s Master Fund posted a gain of 47 percent in 2013. The paper reports that TCI’s earlier obligation to contribute earnings to the charity ended last year. Last month Jamie Cooper-Hohn was awarded £337 million, or more than $527 million, in their divorce settlement, which works out to nearly half of Hohn’s £700 million fortune, according to the Daily Mail.
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Shares of Bob Evans plunged 13.5 percent, to $48.54, on Wednesday after the restaurant and packaged foods company reported that revenues and same-store sales came in below expectations. On Wednesday KeyBank Capital Markets downgraded the stock to underweight from hold and established a 12-month price target of $45, according to marketwatch.com. In August, Thomas Sandell’s Sandell Asset Management won four seats in its proxy fight at the company’s annual shareholder meeting. In the third quarter, Sandell boosted its stake by 7 percent to nearly 1.53 million shares of stock. It is now the firm’s second largest holding.
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Steven Cohen’s family office, Point72 Asset Management, disclosed that it owns 3.5 million shares, or 5.1 percent, of Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners. It did not own any shares of the biopharmaceutical company at the end of the third quarter.
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Investcorp announced that Gregory LaFiura has joined its hedge funds business as a principal in the manager research team to focus on long-short equity strategies. He will be responsible for sourcing and conducting due diligence on equity managers for its fund of hedge funds and seeding platforms. The firm, which manages more than $11 billion, has $5 billion in its hedge funds group, including $2.5 billion in customized funds of hedge funds, $2.2 billion in its single manager business and $221 million in its special opportunities portfolios. Its single manager funds are managed by third party managers. LaFiura previously spent nine years at asset manager Permal Group, most recently serving as a portfolio manager for its equity focused fund of funds.
