Seth Klarman, the CEO of Boston-based Baupost Group, is recovering from cardiac bypass surgery, the firm revealed in a letter sent to investors and obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Klarman was discharged on Tuesday after six days in a Boston hospital and the surgery was deemed a success, a Baupost spokeswoman told the paper.
“As you can imagine, I’m eager and excited to return to work after I recover and look forward to many more years of doing what I love,” Klarman wrote, according to the report. “However, before returning full time, I will take the time necessary to regain my strength.”
Klarman did not say when he will return, though the report cited experts who say recovery time from cardiac bypass surgery is usually six to 12 weeks. “I’ve already been in touch with the office and plan to gradually begin working from home before returning to the office full time,” Klarman wrote. Klarman is revered in value investing circles; Baupost’s main fund has delivered annualized returns of about 17 percent since inception, and the firm now manages $28.5 billion, according to the report.
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Toby Bartlett has shuttered his Hong Kong-based hedge fund firm, Arena Capital Management, which managed a small Japan-focused hedge fund, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The fund was established in mid-2012 and had about $50 million in assets. Before launching Arena, Bartlett worked as a portfolio manager in the Hong Kong office of New York-based Highbridge Capital Management and for Chicago-based Citadel’s offices in Japan, according to the report. He is joining George Long’s Lim Advisors and will bring with him two of Arena’s analysts, Ayumu Kuroda and Yukimi Oda, who will work in Lim’s Hong Kong and Tokyo offices, the report said.
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General Motors reached a deal with a group of activist hedge fund firms that were pressuring the auto maker to buy back $8 billion in stock and angling for a board seat. The firms — Appaloosa Management, Hayman Capital Management, Taconic Capital Management and HG Vora — own a combined 2 percent of the company and were represented by Harry Wilson, who served on the task force that restructured the auto maker as it was emerging from bankruptcy in 2009. GM said it will buy back $5 billion of stock, and the hedge funds said they will drop their bid for a board seat. Wilson told the Associated Press that GM agreed to almost everything the funds wanted. “We basically said thank you,” he told the wire service.
