Shares of Family Dollar Stores rose less than 1 percent on the first trading day after Carl Icahn called on the company to “immediately” put itself up for sale. “We believe there would be significant interest from strategic and financial buyers who could recognize massive synergies from an acquisition of the company,” Icahn said in a letter to the company. On June 6, Icahn disclosed he owned 9.4 percent of the discount retail chain. The stock is up more than 21 percent since the third week in May. The largest shareholder is Trian Fund Management, with 7.35 percent of the stock, while Paulson & Co. owns 5.68 percent of the stock.
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With two weeks to go in the first half, William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management is shaping up to be one of the top performers this year. Through June 13, the activist hedge fund firm’s flagship fund was up 23.27 percent.
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It looks like hedge fund redemptions rose in the latest month, at least according to one survey. The SS&C GlobeOp Forward Redemption Indicator came in at 4.80 percent in June, up from 4.32 percent the prior month. Bill Stone, chairman and chief executive officer of SS&C Technologies, says in a press release that this is “in line with semi-annual patterns.” The Indicator represents the total number of forward redemption notices received from investors in hedge funds administered by SS&C GlobeOp divided by the firm’s assets under administration at the beginning of the month. The Indicator topped out at 19.27 percent in November 2008.
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Investors officially approved Seth Cohen as a director at the annual meeting of dELiA’s, the embattled retailer of clothing for teen girls. Cohen is a partner with David Gallo’s Valinor Management. In February, the hedge fund firm disclosed that under a purchase agreement, Gallo will nominate Cohen to the company’s board of directors, as well as another individual designated by Valinor who is not an employee of the hedge fund and is approved by dELiA’s chief executive. Gallo can be called a great-grandcub as well as a Tiger Cub. He previously worked at Bridger Capital, founded by Roberto Mignone, who in turn previously worked for Tiger Cub John Griffin’s Blue Ridge Capital, and he also worked at Tiger Management.