Obviously, I’ve not been blogging much lately, but something I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at is dividend arbitrage. In it its most well-known version, this is the practice of shifting stock around the ex dividend in order minimise tax payab…Read more…
Monopoly industries, monopoly owners
One of of the things I find myself spending time reading and thinking about lately is the interaction between concentration of companies (or oligopoly) within industries, and concentration of ownership of those same companies.
There have been a number…Read more…
Asset managers and stakeholders
There’s a proliferation of comment pieces from asset managers lately seeking to demonstrate that they “get it” when it comes to lack of trust in business and finance. A lot of these simply re-tread the same ground, with more exhortations to more stewar…Read more…
Stock-lending and shorting, again
I’ve been thinking a bit more about the potential conflicts of interest around stock-lending and shorting in light of the RD:IR paper I blogged about a couple of weeks back. It suggested that passive managers are in part able to offer lower fees becaus…Read more…
More short stuff
Again, huge caveat that the data in these charts is only 0.5%+ short positions, but some interesting stuff I think. At the end of play yesterday the FCA had disclosed 581 current short positions of 0.5% and above in UK shares. So I looked at which firm…Read more…
Kier Group ownership changes
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Interserve / Kier Group short selling etc
Following on from Kier Group (and Carillion, of course) it looks like Interserve is facing some serious financial pressure. According to the FT there are “rescue” talks underway that involve a debt for equity swap that would largely wipe out existing s…Read more…
Kier Group in trouble
Kier Group’s shares took a nosedive on Friday afternoon, after the company announced a £250m rights issue intended to pay down its debt. The background to this, according to Kier Group, is a mixture of lenders pulling back from the construction sector,…Read more…
More hedge fund shenanigans
1. I had a quick Google to see if there are any more funds that use the generic blurb I’ve found in dozens of cases to avoid compliance with the Stewardship Code. And… yes there are.
Curam Capital Management:
Curam Capital Management LLP (the “Firm…Read more…
Ryanair: ownership and control
Ryanair’s latest results are out today. Aside from the update on negotiations on unions, which I won’t comment on…, the bit that caught my eye is the commentary on Brexit and the potential knock-on impact on Ryanair’s shareholders:
We remain concerne…Read more…
Carillion: shareholder primacy plus shareholder inaction
As most people will be aware, the Work and Pensions and BEIS committee have published their joint report on the Carillion collapse today. I won’t bother rehashing much better summaries of what it says that you can read elsewhere, rather I want to focus…Read more…
Derivatives, influence, tax, policy etc
One of the things that was left hanging after the Melrose/GKN bid was the nature of the relationship between hedge funds and similar investors and their counter parties, and how this plays out during bid situations.
When I watched Greg Clark defending…Read more…
Unite calls for tougher takeover laws as GKN bid gets government go-ahead
Unite calls for tougher takeover laws as GKN bid gets government go-ahead24 April 2018The whims of short-term speculators and hedge funds will ‘drive a coach and horses’ through the UK’s industrial strategy unless the government toughens up the UK’s ta…Read more…
Merger arbitrage in practice: Sand Grove Capital
Given the renewed interest in financial market activity around mergers and acquisitions, I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the regulatory disclosures for one of the funds that has caught my eye lately.
I hadn’t heard of Sand Grove Ca…Read more…
No, Elliott is not Whitbread’s largest shareholder
With the Melrose bid for GKN almost complete, our old friends Elliott are back in the news again, this time targeting Whitbread, where it looks like they will be pushing for Costa to be spun off. Cue lots of headlines, many of them identifying Elliott’…Read more…
Just a bit more on GKN
Here are a couple of things I noticed over the past few days. Anyone sharing my interest in this should have a read of John Collingridge’s great piece looking at the end of the bid process. There are some really interesting nuggets in there.
For examp…Read more…
GKN takeover – losing the battle, winning the war
Few things have made me as angry recently as the Melrose takeover bid for GKN. This bid was opposed by a very wide group – workers, unions, GKN customers, Labour, some Tories, the Daily Mail, most of the large long-term GKN shareholders – yet it got ov…Read more…
Elliott’s support for Melrose shows why GKN must not be taken over
Yesterday afternoon, Elliott Advisers announced that it plans to support the Melrose bid for GKN. This was duly reported, without much scrutiny, as support for Melrose from GKN’s second largest shareholder.
Actually it’s more complicated than that. In…Read more…
Melrose / GKN bid – is the hedge fund long/short trade unwinding?
As you’ll have noticed, I’ve been following the Melrose bid for GKN with interest. In particular I’ve been looking at hedge fund activity around the bid, and the short Melrose / long GKN arbitrage trade. As I’ve blogged previously, one of the key playe…Read more…
More on GKN / Melrose
So it’s been quite a few days in terms of GKN’s continued attempt to fend of Melrose Industries’ hostile bid.
Last week saw Melrose get overwhelming shareholder approval for its bid. It will be interesting to dig into Q1 voting disclosures once they a…Read more…