Finally! Friday June 2 is the annual meeting of Buffalo Wild Wings, which means we won’t be reading what seems like daily diatribes about the restaurant chain’s prospects from Mick McGuire III’s Marcato Capital Management, which has nominated four of the nine directors up for election.
In a note to clients, Credit Suisse says the hedge fund “is more likely than not” to win its proxy fight, although it concedes it is “difficult to call.” If Marcato wins, the investment bank is not very optimistic. It is looking for a “modest short-term bounce in the stock.” It adds that it is still neutral on the stock, however, noting the “underlying trends could get worse before they get better.” This is because Buffalo Wild Wings still faces structural challenges that Credit Suisse says will take time to fix.
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Saba Capital Management, which has a sizable allocation to closed-end mutual funds, disclosed it owns 5.8 percent of the Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Debt Fund. It is currently trading at a 9.65 percent discount to its net asset value (NAV) even after the stock rose a bit on Thursday. Saba, headed by Boaz Weinstein, disclosed this investment in a 13G filing, meaning the investment is passive. His last initial filing indicating he owned more than 5 percent of a closed-end fund was disclosed in a 13D.
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Leon Cooperman’s Omega Advisors reported $3.6 billion under management as of May 31, unchanged from the previous month. In May the one-time Goldman Sachs partner settled insider trading charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission, an agreement that crucially did not result in a temporary or lifetime ban from the investment business and did not require him to admit guilt.
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Big day for Valeant Pharmaceuticals International. Shares of the embattled drug company surged 4.36 percent, to close at $12.57. However, there was no discernible news to explain the sharp move. The stock has been extremely volatile this year and is still down more than 13 percent in 2017.
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Shares of Herbalife surged 3.23 percent, to $74.10, after the multilevel marketer of health and nutrition products named Richard Goudis as the new chief executive officer, succeeding Michael Johnson, who will become executive chairman. Goudis has been with the company for 13 years, serving as chief operating officer since 2010 and chief financial officer from 2004 to 2009.
