William Ackman’s Pershing Square Holdings is the latest high-profile hedge fund to report a big loss in June. The fund, managed by New York activist firm Pershing Square Capital Management, fell by 3.4 percent last month, cutting its gain for the year to 3.2 percent. It didn’t help that Ackman’s high-profile short, Herbalife, rose nearly 6 percent in June.
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Daniel Loeb’s Third Point Offshore Fund lost 0.8 percent in June, trimming its gain for the year to 4.9 percent. Most of the loss came from its equity book. The fund also posted a slight loss in its credit portfolio. Even so, the fund, managed by New York-based Third Point, remains comfortably ahead of the S&P 500, which is up just 1.2 percent for the year, including dividends reinvested.
More interesting, however, is that Third Point in June raised its net long exposure in its equity book to 70 percent. Loeb has been steadily increasing his net long exposure throughout the year. It was between 53 and 54 percent in the first four months of the year and around 60 percent in May and June. We recently noted that Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn lifted his portfolio’s net exposure at the end of June to 21 percent from 14 percent at the end of the first quarter. Third Point’s credit portfolio is 29 percent net long.
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Daniel Och’s OZ Master Fund lost 0.50 percent in June. As a result, the multistrategy fund, managed by New York-based Och-Ziff Capital Management, is up 4.13 percent for the year. The OZ Asia Master Fund lost nearly 1 percent last month but is still up a comfortable 12.4 percent for the year. The OZ Europe Master Fund also lost nearly 1 percent in June and is up 5.24 percent for the first six months. In its regulatory filing, Och-Ziff said that as of July 1, it had $46.8 billion under management, down $1.3 billion from the prior month. The difference includes performance and capital flows.
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New York-based Omega Advisors’ Leon Cooperman slightly boosted his stake in Loral Space & Communications to more than 1.1 million shares, or 5.21 percent of the satellite communications company.
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John Paulson’s Paulson & Co. is planning to raise money for a new fund, the Paulson European Event Equities Fund, according to CNBC.com, citing New York State and Monetary Authority of Singapore filings. It is not clear when the New York hedge fund manager plans to officially launch the fund, according to the report. Paulson also is launching the Paulson Long-Short Fund, which will specialize in health care stocks. According to a letter dated June 16 and obtained by Alpha, that fund’s focus will include pharmaceutical “and related technology and consumer sector investments.”
