Barry Rosenstein’s Jana Partners is turning up the heat on QEP Resources, an independent natural gas and oil exploration and production company spun off from Questar in 2010. The New York-based hedge fund firm, which owns 7.6 percent of the stock, disclosed it had fired off a letter to the company’s board of directors on November 13 urging it to create an independent committee to evaluate the possibility of spinning off QEP’s midstream business.
“Should it fail to do so, the board will ensure that it will be held personally responsible by shareholders for its failure to put a check on a clearly conflicted CEO and management team who appear intent on depriving shareholders of QEP’s full value potential,” Jana warned in the letter.
When it disclosed its activist stake last month, Jana called on the company to execute a series of moves, including adding board members and management with a history of creating value in its midstream energy business and separating the unit from the rest of the company. Jana lamented that “it has become clear that QEP Chairman and CEO Charles B. Stanley is unwilling to accept that true value maximization requires the full implementation of this plan.” Jana added that it has spoken with numerous parties interested in exploring a strategic transaction with QEP that would result in selling the midstream business, QEPFS, but are “very hesitant” to deal with Stanley “given his apparent reluctance” to make this move.
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Shares of Herbalife Wednesday surged more than 3 percent on heavier than usual volume. There was no apparent news, although at the DealBook conference on Tuesday Third Point’s Daniel Loeb stressed he did not believe that the nutritional supplements company is a pyramid scheme. That alone does not sound like a reason to send the stock soaring.
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Three individuals who formerly worked for Weintraub Capital Management have raised nearly $80 million for their own hedge funds: Post Street Master Fund and Post Street Fund. The Master fund alone reported in a regulatory filing raising $70 million from just one individual. Heading the funds are Joseph Ziolkowski and Peter Luber, who had been portfolio managers at Weintraub, and Diana Mah, formerly director of operations. Weintraub, a $1 billion San Francisco-based long-short fund firm founded by Jerry Weintraub, said late last year that it would close down and become a family office.
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Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates reported it had nearly $11.9 billion invested in U.S. equities at the end of the third quarter, up slightly from $11.4 billion in June. About 90 percent of the assets are invested in three exchange-traded funds — a Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock fund, the SPDR that tracks the S&P 500 and the iShares that track the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Altogether, 60 percent of his equities bet is on two ETFs tracking emerging markets.
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Richard Perry’s Perry Corp. disclosed a nearly $4 billion equity portfolio at the end of the third quarter. More than one-quarter of those assets was invested in put options on exchange-traded funds (ETF). In fact, iShares that bet on the Russell 2000 and iShares that track the real estate industry combined to account for about $900 million of the portfolio. At the end of the second quarter, Perry had a $650 million long bet on an S&P 500 ETF, which he closed out in the third quarter. His largest long position at the end of the third quarter was in FedEx, a stock Third Point’s Dan Loeb said at a conference Tuesday he had also recently bought.
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Seth Klarman’s Baupost Group reduced the size of its U.S. equity portfolio to $3.5 billion at the end of the third quarter from $4 billion in June. The eclectic investor, who is not afraid to hold a hefty percentage of assets in cash, rarely has a big chunk of his assets in stocks. For example, at the end of 2012, Baupost had a total $26.7 billion under management. Three stocks accounted for nearly three-quarters of the $3.5 billion stock portfolio—semiconductor maker Micron Technology Inc., biopharmaceutical company Theravance Inc. and communications equipment maker ViaSat Inc.
