The Morning Brief: Third Point’s Gain; Chris Levett’s Homecoming

Daniel Loeb’s Third Point was up about 1.7 percent in May, bringing its gain for the first five months of the year to 3.7 percent. The results are the estimated net returns of the investment account of Third Point Re, which is managed by Loeb’s New York hedge fund firm Third Point.

Who says you can never go home? Chris Levett plans to return to Louis Bacon’s Moore Capital Management after shutting down Clive Capital in 2013, his commodity hedge-fund firm that lost money for three straight years, according to a Bloomberg report. Levett will be returning to Moore in September. He made his sole appearance on Alpha’s Rich List in 2009 after earning $85 million the previous year, when his fund soared 44 percent by trading everything from energy and metals to grains and vegetable oils. At Moore he generated a 39 percent return in 2004, 47 percent in 2005 and 31 percent in 2006. Clive was launched in November 2007 and managed as much as $5.1 billion in 2011.

William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and Valeant Pharmaceuticals are changing their strategy for the Canadian drugmaker’s bid to buy Allergan. Ackman told investors on a conference call that he wants to call a special meeting so that shareholders can vote on whether to replace most of Allergan’s directors. He is hoping for the meeting to take place between early August and late November if he gets enough shareholders to back his campaign. The current directors were re-elected last month. If Ackman does not call a special meeting, he will have to wait about 11 months to unseat the current board members.

In response to this threatened proxy fight, Allergan fired off a response urging shareholders to refrain from taking any action, including returning any proxy card sent by Pershing Square and Valeant, until they have reviewed the recommendation of Allergan’s board. “Under federal securities laws, Pershing Square and Valeant cannot solicit proxies from Allergan stockholders until Pershing Square and Valeant provide stockholders with definitive proxy solicitation materials,” it reminds its shareholders.

Christopher Hohn’s The Children’s Investment Fund Management disclosed it owns 5 percent of Moody’s. However, the London-based activist investor made the filing using a 13G, meaning the investment is passive. We’ll see if he converts this status in the future.

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