Does President Obama read Alpha magazine? On Tuesday he cited the Rich List when he lambasted hedge funds for paying lower tax rates than most people while speaking at Georgetown University. “The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country,” Obama said during a panel discussion on poverty, according to Reuters. He called on hedge fund managers to pay higher taxes on their gains. “If we can’t ask from society’s lottery winners to just make that modest investment, then, really, this conversation is for show,” Obama told the audience. Thanks for reading, Mr. President.
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Pershing Square Capital Management’s William Ackman and his wife Karen donated $25 million to the Robin Hood Foundation at Tuesday’s night’s annual fundraiser through The Pershing Square Foundation. Another anonymous donor also gave $25 million. Other hedge fund titans in attendance included David Tepper of Appaloosa Management, David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital and Michael Novogratz of Fortress Investment Group. The founder of Robin Hood is Paul Tudor Jones II of Tudor Investment Corp.
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Kenneth Griffin’s Citadel disclosed that as of May 6 it owned more than 3.2 million shares of Delek U.S. Holdings, or 5.6 percent of the outstanding shares of the downstream energy company. Citadel owned just 112,000 shares at year-end. We won’t know its stake as of March 31 until probably the end of this week.
Separately, the Chicago hedge fund firm disclosed that as of May 6 it owned nearly 3.5 million shares of ClubCorp Holdings, or 5.4 percent of the membership-based leisure company. Citadel owned a little more than 2 million shares at year-end. Both positions are passive.
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The SS&C GlobeOp Hedge Fund Performance Index inched up 0.34 percent in April. Meanwhile SS&C reported that hedge fund flows rose 0.92 percent in May. “May 2015 saw the largest increase in the Capital Movement Index in the past 12 months, as inflows easily outpaced outflows,” said Bill Stone, chairman and chief executive officer of SS&C Technologies, in a press release. “In fact, outflows were the lowest recorded since the index’s inception in 2006.”
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Renaissance Technologies lifted the value of its U.S. equity portfolio to $47 billion at the end of the first quarter from $41.4 billion at year-end. The East Setauket, New York firm uses a lot of leverage. At year-end, the firm had $26 billion under management.
