The Morning Brief: JANA Gets Ready to do Battle with Agrium

JANA Partners said it plans to launch a proxy fight with Agrium, the Canadian fertilizer maker. The activist hedge fund firm announced it will propose five candidates, including JANA managing partner Barry Rosenstein, for election to the company’s board. In making the announcement JANA, which has already called for the company to split its wholesale and retail divisions into separate companies, stated that its slate of nominees “will add critical oversight to a board that for years has tolerated suboptimal capital allocation, failure to manage costs, structural issues, lack of transparency, and share price underperformance” compared with its peers.

The federal government has charged Stephen Colangelo, Jr., in two separate schemes to defraud investors out of $2.7 million. According to the government, Colangelo claimed he was an investment manager and solicited funds from private investors for the Brickell Fund, which he said was a hedge fund which he operated. He also told potential investors he would be paid a management fee and a percentage of trading profits. In reality, Colangelo regularly misappropriated large amounts of investor money for his own personal benefit and to support unrelated business ventures, according to Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and Mary E. Galligan, the acting assistant director-in-charge of the New York office of the FBI. Colangelo was charged with two counts of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. The securities fraud and wire fraud charges each carry a maximum of 20 years in prison. In a parallel action, the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged Colangelo siphoned off at least $1 million in investor funds to pay such unauthorized personal expenses as his federal income taxes, illegal narcotics, gambling, cigars, and travel for him and his family.

A pair of distressed debt-focused hedge funds that controls Hostess may not shut down the Twinkie maker after all. The company and one of its unions agreed to a mediation session that could also include the company’s lenders. If the session fails, Hostess lawyers on Wednesday are expected to seek approval from the bankruptcy judge to move forward with their plan to shutter the company. Hedge funds Monarch Alternative Capital and Silver Point Capital and private equity firm Ripplewood Holdings currently control the company.

Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors LP reported it owns 5 percent of The Medicines Co., a pharmaceutical company that focuses on the hospital market.

Another hedge fund is shutting down. Libra Advisors LLC, a $2 billion hedge-fund firm founded in 1990, earlier this month told clients it plans to return outside investors’ money and become a family office.

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