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Reuters – U.S. hedge fund Harbinger Capital is the first company to declare a short position in HSBC following the bank’s record rights issue, after making millions from a similar tactic with UK bank HBOS last year.
Harbinger said in a regulatory filing it has taken a 0.26 percent short position in HSBC’s London shares, worth about 110 million pounds. By 0910 GMT the shares were up 2.5 percent at 356 pence.
International Herald Tribune – U.S. hedge fund Harbinger Capital is the first company to declare a short position in HSBC following the bank’s record rights issue, after making millions from a similar tactic with UK bank HBOS last year.
Harbinger said in a regulatory filing it has taken a 0.26 percent short position in HSBC’s London shares, worth about 110 million pounds. By 9:10 a.m. the shares were up 2.5 percent at 356 pence.
Harbinger has also unveiled a series of short positions in Spanish banks in recent weeks, including a short position of 1 percent in BBVA and 0.4 percent in Santander.
TopNews - Fortescue Metals Group Ltd said Tuesday that Chinese steel maker Hunan Valin Iron and Steel will pay 558 million Australian dollars (357 million US dollars) for a 16.5-per-cent stake in the Australian iron ore miner.
Under what’s known as a stand-still agreement, Valin will undertake to hold no more than 17.5 per cent of Fortescue.
Valin will buy 225 million newly issued shares and buy 275 million Fortescue shares from US-based hedge fund Harbinger Capital.
Multichannel Online – Harbinger Capital, the hedge fund that caused a stir last year when it began buying large blocks of Cablevision Systems shares, continued a sell-off of the stock that began earlier this year, reducing its holdings in the Bethpage, N.Y.-based cable operator to 5%.
Harbinger, seen by many observers to be the main catalyst in Cablevision management’s newfound openness with shareholders, said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Tuesday that it had reduced its holdings in the cable operator to 11.7 million shares, or about 5% of its outstanding stock. That’s down from the 7.5% interest Harbinger held in Cablevision in January and almost half the 9.1% interest the hedge fund controlled in September.
Guardian Unlimited – When Simon Jordan bought Crystal Palace in July 2000, flush with £36m from selling his mobile phone company to One2One, the club’s fans could hope that he would deliver Premier League football and a ground shinier than today’s weathered Selhurst Park. Eight years on, with Jordan having fought sundry energetic battles and become something of a celebrity – and with Palace having enjoyed a single season in the Premier League – he says almost all of that money has been spent. Palace are in the Championship relegation zone, still do not own Selhurst Park and are mortgaged to a hedge fund, Agilo, which describes itself as specialising in "distressed companies".
Jordan laughed at the idea that Palace is a "distressed company" and emphasised that he is not under financial pressure. But he did say he has had enough of football and he does want to sell the club.
"I want to do other things," he said. "I will miss the fans, and I will miss Neil Warnock [Palace's manager], but I won’t miss much else. I’m fed up with avaricious footballers."
