A big Tiger Cub favorite got slammed on Tuesday. Shares of JD.com fell nearly 9 percent to close at $25.05, even though there was no apparent news on the Chinese online retailer. At the end of the fourth quarter, 13 hedge fund firms with ties to Julian Robertson, Jr.’s Tiger Management held a position in the stock. They included New York-based Tiger Global Management, JD.com’s second-largest shareholder. The stock was one of three in which Tiger Global’s hedge funds have an outsize-stake. In its first-quarter 2015 letter to clients, Tiger Global called JD.com “the leading fulfillment-based ecommerce company in China” and the second-largest ecommerce company in China behind Alibaba Group Holding. “JD is levered to ‘retail leapfrogging’ in emerging markets, which we believe is one of the most powerful secular themes globally,” Tiger Global wrote at the time. At year-end, Greenwich, Connecticut-based Lone Pine Capital was the fourth-largest shareholder in JD.com while New York-based Coatue Management was the seventh largest. The stock is down about 22 percent year-to-date.
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Bad news for the Perceptive Life Sciences fund, managed by Perceptive Advisors. Shares of Sarepta Therapeutics, the New York firm’s third-largest position at year-end, plunged more than 26 percent Tuesday after the pharmaceutical company failed to receive Food and Drug Administration approval for its Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug, which many potential patients were counting on. The stock is now down more than 70 percent this year. Last year, the hedge fund firm headed by Joseph Edelman posted a 51.8 percent gain.
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Another hedge fund of funds firm is shutting down. Chicago-based Aurora Investment Management said it will return $5.4 billion to investors after its merger deal with 50 South Capital Advisors fell apart, according to Bloomberg. The firm was founded more than 28 years ago by Roxanne Martino. “After considering a variety of strategic alternatives, we have decided that it is in the best interests of our investors to return the capital in our funds in a manner that will treat all investors fairly and equitably,” Aurora said in a letter to investors.
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The Senate Special Committee on Aging plans to question New York’s Pershing Square Capital Management’s William Ackman at its hearings on Wednesday on the rising price of drugs. This is the third in a series of hearings by the committee. Ackman will appear on the same panel as J. Michael Pearson, chief executive officer of Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, and Howard Schiller, director, former chief financial officer, and former interim CEO of Valeant.
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The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) announced a new guide designed to help directors deal with shareholder-activist challenges. According to a press release, the publication addresses trends in activist-investor campaigns, outlines methods activists use to influence management, and highlights ten high-profile activists, their strategies, and the companies they’ve targeted. An earlier NACD survey found that more than 20 percent of respondent boards were approached by activist investors during the past year. However, 46 percent had no plan for dealing with these campaigns.
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Michael Hume has joined MKP Capital Management as managing director and senior markets strategist, based in London. He will focus on European macroeconomic research. The New York-based firm currently has $7 billion in assets under management.
