William Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdings suffered a big setback in March, dropping 3.1 percent for the month. Even so, the New York activist’s public fund is still up 3.5 percent for the quarter thanks to a 6.2 percent surge in February. Most of March’s losses came in the final two weeks of the month.
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P. Schoenfeld Asset Management’s Peter Schoenfeld says he is not looking to launch a proxy fight with Vivendi at its April 17 annual meeting. Although the New York hedge fund has publicly called on the company to boost its payout in an effort to reward shareholders, it does not anticipate nominating its own director slate, according to Reuters. “We are not planning to try to put any new directors on the agenda,” Schoenfeld told the wire service. “We have no plans in that respect at all.” The hedge fund, which occasionally engages in activist campaigns, owns 0.8 percent of the French media group. Schoenfeld has submitted two resolutions calling on the company to return €9 billion ($9.8 billion) to shareholders, which is much higher than the €5.7 billion Vivendi has promised to pay out through 2017. The company currently has $38 billion in cash stemming, in part from sales of assets.
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In a first look at industry-wide March results, the Credit Suisse Liquid Alternative Beta (LAB) Index rose 0.29 percent for the month. As a result, it is up 2.82 percent for the quarter. The Managed Futures strategy was the top performer in March, up 4.28 percent, and is up 11.35 percent for the quarter. The Event Driven Liquid Index fell 1.29 percent in March but it still up 2.63 percent for the year while the Merger Arbitrage strategy fell in March and is down 0.23 percent for the quarter. The LAB indices try to reflect the performance of the overall hedge fund industry.
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Davidson Kempner Partners disclosed it owns 925,000 shares of Harmony Merger, or 6.2 percent of the total outstanding. Harmony is a blank check company created to do several mergers that went public on March 27.
