Larry Robbins’ Glenview Capital Management is threatening to go activist on Manitowoc. In a regulatory filing, the New York hedge fund firm says it bought one million shares of the maker of cranes and related equipment on April 28 and 29 for around $19.50 per share, boosting its stake to 9.6 million shares, or 7.06 percent of the total. Glenview says in the 13D filing that it took the stake for investment purposes. However, it also uses boiler-plate language to say it may communicate with management, the board or other investors about boosting shareholder value, but concedes it does not currently have concrete plans to offer.
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Bridgewater Associates has raised a whopping $10 billion from existing investors for its new Optimal Portfolio, according to published reports. The fund is reportedly only being offered to existing clients. Among investors plunking down money for the fund: The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, the University of Michigan and Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, according to Pensions & Investments. The Optimal Portfolio “aims to combine [Bridgewater’s] best beta with tailored, value-adding and risk-reducing alpha, producing a high, consistent and diversifying return stream,” said Susan E. Oh, senior portfolio manager at the $52 billion Harrisburg-based Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, in a report recently presented to trustees, according to the P&I report.
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Och-Ziff Capital Management Group’s multistrategy fund, OZ Master Fund, rose about 1 percent in May, bringing its gain for the year-to-date to 4.65 percent. OZ Asia Master Fund rose 2 percent last month and is now up 13.55 percent for the year while OZ Europe Master Fund rose 1.24 percent in May and 6.33 percent for the year. Daniel Och’s New York-based hedge fund firm Och-Ziff also said in a regulatory filing that assets under management rose $900 million in the past month, to $48.1 billion.
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Highbridge Capital Management disclosed it owns 1 million shares of GP Investments Acquisition Corp., or 5.2 percent of the total outstanding. This is the shell company that raised $172.5 million last week in order to do deals.
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Stifel Nicolaus downgraded shares of Ctrip.com International, the Chinese online-travel company, from Buy to Hold. “We believe a new round of industry competition is emerging which will likely negatively impact the industry and the company’s profit margins for the balance of 2015,” Stifel Nicolaus told clients in a note Tuesday. The stock previously had an $88 target price. New York-based OZ Management, a subsidiary of Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, owns 3.3 percent of the shares while Greenwich, Connecticut-based Viking Global Investors holds 3 percent. Altogether, six descendants of Julian Robertson, Jr.’s Tiger Management also owned shares at the end of the first quarter, according to New York-based Novus, a portfolio intelligence platform. As recently as the second quarter of 2014, 11 Tiger Cubs, Seeds and Grandcubs owned shares.
