New York-based D.E. Shaw Group has raised at least $152.4 million for D. E. Shaw Orienteer X Fund, its latest iteration in the Orienteer group of funds. According to its most recent ADV, the multistrategy and quantitative firm had a total of $573 million in its Orienteer portfolios. According to a September 19, 2013, manager recommendation memo sent from consulting firm Aksia to the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS), Orienteer is described as a global tactical asset allocation fund “with an exotic risk premia bucket.” The New York firm has more than $37 billion in invested capital as of July 1.
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Clifton Robbins’ Blue Harbour Group boosted its stake in Rackspace Hosting to 8 percent. The Greenwich, Connecticut-based activist hedge fund firm picked up one million shares of the provider of cloud computing services on August 12 for $29.53 per share, after the stock sank nearly 8 percent in one day and about 25 percent in a month, and 68,500 shares on July 7 for $36.50. The stock dropped about 1.5 percent on Thursday on the news. Another activist firm, Jana Partners, has also been a major shareholder in recent quarters. In the second quarter, Jana nearly doubled its stake in Rackspace to 11 million shares. Even so, it does not rank among the firm’s top-10 holdings.
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You live by the bubble and hype, you die by the bubble and hype. Hedge fund investors who didn’t learn this lesson during the 1990s Internet mania had another chance in July when the HFRI China Index fell 7.7 percent and the Shanghai Composite Index plummeted 14 percent. These losses caused a $10 billion decline in total capital invested in Asian hedge funds, according to Chicago-based data tracker Hedge Fund Research. Capital in the region had just risen to a record $126.3 billion at the end of the second quarter. It wasn’t just China that was affected. The HFRI EM: Asia ex-Japan Index declined by 5.6 percent in July, cutting its gain for the year to 4.5 percent, while the HFRI Japan Index slipped 0.2 percent last month, but is still up 8.8 percent for the year. HFR points out that before the July swoon, Asian hedge funds enjoyed net asset inflows of $1.74 billion in the second quarter.
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Hedge fund favorite SunEdison jumped another 5 percent or so after it announced late Wednesday it will partner with energy producer and transporter Dominion to create a solar project in Utah. The stock at one point in the day rose as much as 14 percent. In the past two days alone the stock is up 12 percent. However, it is still down 35 percent for the month.
