The Morning Brief: Valiant’s Pinterest Play Pays Off

Pinterest has raised another $367 million, according to a regulatory filing, and one big beneficiary is Christopher Hansen’s San Francisco-based Valiant Capital Management. The hedge fund firm has invested in at least two earlier rounds of financing in the privately-held social media website. According to Valiant’s January 2015 report, obtained by Alpha, a $17.9 million investment the firm made in Pinterest made in February 2013 is now worth more than $41 million. Another $1.2 million investment in Pinterest made in May 2014 is now worth $1.8 million. The latest round of financing brings Pinterest’s valuation to around $11 billion, according to a Wall Street Journal report.


Tiger Global Management has participated in a $15 million Series A financing for Moonfrog Labs, a Bangalore-based company that makes games that can be downloaded from mobile devices, according to TechCrunch. The website says the money will be used for hiring and developing new games.


Kenneth Griffin’s Chicago-based Citadel reported that it has taken a 2.34 million share stake in Conn’s, or 6.5 percent of the total outstanding shares. The appliance chain heavily relies on customers financing their purchases of everyday items. At year-end, Citadel owned just 54,000 shares, although it also owned a huge amount of call options as well as a lesser amount of put options.

Separately, Citadel disclosed that it owns more than 9.55 million shares, or 5.1 percent, of Gramercy Property Trust., a real estate investment trust. It owned a little more than 5.3 million shares at year-end.


David Harding’s London-based Winton Capital Management amended its quarterly U.S. equity holdings for the period ending December 31, 2014. In its revised 13F filing, Winton says it had $8 billion in equities at year-end, not $8.8 billion as it previously reported.


Stuart Riley, a former Goldman Sachs co-head of Asia Pacific macro trading, has joined Chris Rokos’ new hedge fund firm, which is expected to launch sometime this year, according to Reuters. Rokos is the “R” in Brevan Howard Asset Management, the London-based global macro giant launched in 2002 and led by Alan Howard.

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