New York Post - Three board members at the embattled Dillard’s department-store chain lashed out at a pair of hedge funds that are agitating to oust the retailer’s top management.
In a rare public statement, the Dillard’s trio of independent directors rejected a call by Barington Capital and Clinton Group to fire Chief Executive […]

New York (HedgeCo.Net) - The Securities and Exchange Commission charged San Francisco-based MedCap Management & Research LLC and its principal Charles Frederick Toney, Jr. with defrauding investors via “portfolio pumping.”
“Fund investors relied on MMR and Toney to abide by their fiduciary duties and put the fund’s interests ahead of their own,” said San Francisco Regional […]

BloggingStocks - MetLife, Inc., which is the largest life insurer in the U.S., got its start 140 years ago. But the recent couple weeks may have been the toughest as the stock price has plunged.
It seems MetLife’s woes have just started, though, as the company announced Tuesday it has withdrawn its 2008 earnings estimates. As […]

Reuters Singapore - U.S. investment bank Morgan Stanley is weighing whether it should remain independent or merge with a bank, given the recent turbulence in the company’s share price, broadcaster CNBC reported on Wednesday.
Morgan Stanley officials were not in merger talks as of late Tuesday, CNBC said, citing unnamed people close to the matter.
"But senior […]

New York Post - With just two large investment banks remaining - Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs - questions are growing over who might step into the suddenly emptier playing field.
Many Wall Street watchers are pointing to the looming presence of large hedge funds and private-equity firms, which have been stealthily encroaching on […]

International Herald Tribune - In May, David Einhorn, an outspoken hedge fund manager, took the microphone at a large industry gathering and laid out his case against the investment bank Lehman Brothers.
The firm, he told the crowd, had used "accounting ingenuity" to avoid large write-downs and remained tainted by bad commercial real estate investments. Einhorn stood […]

Milwaukee Business Journal - An activist British hedge fund has taken a 5 percent stake in Sovereign Bankcorp Inc.,  according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
London-based Toscafund Asset Management said its passive stake amounts to 33.5 million shares.
Banco Santander Central Hispano, Spain’s largest bank, owns roughly a quarter of Sovereign’s stock and […]

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review- Activist shareholder Highfields Capital Management LP has alerted Alcoa Inc. it may increase its stake in the aluminum maker to as much as 8 percent, a move that would make the Boston-based hedge fund the company’s largest shareholder.
Highfields notified Alcoa last week that it intends to raise its stake, Alcoa said Monday in […]

Nashville Tennessean- A filing made with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday revealed another institutional investor who placed large bets on shares of Nashville-based Gaylord Entertainment as its stock price drifted to new lows almost two weeks ago.
New York-based hedge fund Eminence Capital LLC, headed by Ricky C. Sandler, disclosed that it acquired 2.8 million […]

TheChronicleHerald.ca- Two U.S. private equity firms are offering about $7.8 billion — or $39 a share in cash — for Alberta-based utility TransAlta Corp., which had been under pressure by a major investor to boost its stock price.
LS Power Equity Partners and Global Infrastructure Partners presented TransAlta with a "non-binding approach" on Monday.
TransAlta said its […]

Boston Globe- Dozens of hedge funds and broker-dealers are scrambling to send reams of e-mails and trading records to regulators probing suspected stock price manipulation, several sources at hedge funds said.

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Reuters-  Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) agreed to pay $137.5 million to settle a shareholder lawsuit that claimed the world’s largest soft drink maker artificially inflated sales to boost its stock price, according to court documents.
The lawsuit, filed in October 2000, claimed that in 1999 Coca-Cola had forced some bottlers to […]