Shares of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International fell another 10.7 percent, bringing their two-day decline to more than 19 percent. As a result, the stock closed at $75.92, its lowest price since mid-November and only a few bucks above its all-time low. Its most recent woes apparently began when Wells Fargo raised questions Friday about its accounting practices.
This is bad news for a number of high-profile hedge funds, including William Ackman’s New York-based Pershing Square Capital Management, which remained the third-largest shareholder in Valeant at year-end despite selling nearly three million shares in the fourth quarter. Jeffrey Ubben’s San Francisco-based ValueAct Capital Management stood pat, remaining the fourth-largest holder. (Valeant is his firm’s second-largest holding.) John Paulson’s New York-based Paulson & Co., which boosted its stake by nearly 50 percent last quarter, followed ValueAct. O. Andreas Halvorsen’s Viking Global Investors also raised its stake, by some 56 percent, making the Greenwich, Connecticut firm the eighth-largest shareholder. In fact, most of the largest sellers still remain sizable shareholders.
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Stanley Druckenmiller, the retired one-time head of Duquesne Capital Management, is supporting Ohio governor John Kasich for president. According to Bloomberg, Druckenmiller thinks the lagging Republican candidate has the best shot at beating Democrat Hillary Clinton. “Kasich has been my favorite all along,” the one-time right-hand-man of George Soros told Bloomberg in an e-mail, arguing that Kasich has a better shot than Republican Senator Marco Rubio at beating Clinton. “The perception that Rubio is the most electable Republican is misguided,” he wrote. The New York Times points out that last year Druckenmiller shelled out more than $450,000 to support Kasich, New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
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At least two hedge fund managers wound up betting on the wrong horse when Jeb Bush dropped out of the presidential race. Julian Robertson Jr., founder of New York-based Tiger Management, donated more than $1.1 million to political action committees supporting Bush. while Moore Capital Management founder Louis Bacon donated $1 million, according to Yahoo Finance.
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Viking Global Investors was one among several investors to participate in a $5.5 million series seed funding for Vitagene, a subscription-based supplements company. “The funding is a significant step toward its vision of helping individuals reach peak health through data-driven, personalized products,” the company said in a press release. Its first product is a personalized supplements regimen for members, offered through partnering physicians.
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Daniel Loeb’s Third Point Ventures, the venture capital arm of his Third Point hedge fund firm, participated in the $15 million series B preferred stock financing for Akarna Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company, according to a press release. The company said it plans to use the proceeds to accelerate the development of a drug to help patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis, a progressive form of fatty-liver disease for which there are no approved therapies.
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Chicago-based Citadel has boosted its stake in Oclaro to more than 6.8 million shares, or 5.8 percent of the maker of lasers and optical components. The stock, however, has just a $515 million market cap.
