Steve Cohen has officially announced the new name for his family office: Point72 Asset Management. The legendary founder of SAC Capital Advisors, who as part of a settlement with the government had to return capital to outside investors, said his two new long-short trading divisions will do business as Point72 Asset Management and EverPoint Asset Management. The MultiQuant business will operate as Cubist Systematic Strategies. “We have selected strong new names that reflect our heritage or signal something important about our businesses,” read an email sent to employees. Cohen’s private investments will be managed by Cohen Private Ventures. The firm said it will reassign teams from the old SAC, Sigma and CR Intrinsic divisions to Point72 and EverPoint. For the most part, people in Connecticut will work for Point72 and the people in New York will work for EverPoint. The firm said Point72 Asset Management reflects its headquarters address — 72 Cummings Point Road in Stamford, Connecticut — for more than a decade. As for Cubist Systematic Strategies, the e-mail says the name is “a nod to the art genre, Cubism, and a reflection of the analytic rigor MultiQuant employs in its investing process.”
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Finally! After a long, acrimonious public negotiation, Men’s Wearhouse has struck a deal to acquire Jos. A. Bank for $65 per share, or $1.8 billion. The deal represents a 65 percent premium over Jos. A. Bank’s enterprise value and a 56 percent premium over its closing share price on October 8, 2013, the day before the public announcement of the company’s proposal to acquire Men’s Wearhouse, according to a joint statement from the companies. New York-based hedge fund firm Eminence Capital, which had been aggressively pushing for a merger between the two companies, applauded the announcement. In a press release, Ricky Sandler, chief executive officer of $5.2 billion Eminence, said he is withdrawing his nominees for board seats of Jos. A. Bank.
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Shares of J.C. Penney surged another 3 percent, to $8.67, on Tuesday after Citigroup raised its rating on the stock to “buy” from “neutral” and raised its price target to $11 from $7.50. In the past 11 trading days, the stock has jumped about 65 percent.
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Shares of Apple rose about 1 percent, to $536.09, after Pacific Crest Securities raised its rating on the stock to outperform from sector perform and established a $635 price target. Pacific Crest told clients it expects iPhone replacement rates to stay stable and expects an introduction later in the year of an iPhone 6 that it believes will boost the stock price, according to a published report.
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Herbalife shares fell 1.15 percent, to $65.40, after Pershing Square’s William Ackman trotted out a report that he claims makes the case that the multi-level marketer of nutrition supplements is violating Chinese law. Pershing Square worked with a third party in China to investigate Herbalife’s recruiting techniques and compensation structure for the report, Ackman reportedly said in a conference call.
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Titan Advisors, a $4 billion alternative asset management firm, announced it will host a hedge fund conference geared toward insurance companies on April 10 in New York. In making the announcement, Titan stresses that hedge funds have historically received a relatively small piece of insurer investment allocations. It cites an earlier Deutsche Bank study that showed at the end of 2010, insurers invested only 1.24 percent of their $5 trillion in general account investments to alternatives, compared with 5 percent from pension funds and 25 percent from endowments and foundations.
