Guardian Unlimited – Hedge funds are buying into power supplier Scottish & Southern Energy in hopes of a bid for the company, currently valued at over £12bn.

The latest fund to have bought shares is Centaurus, headed by Frenchman Bernard Oppetit, who is understood to have made millions via a recent investment in British Energy.

It caused a splash in the UK in 2006 when it blocked a bid for engineering company Amec from private equity group Texas Pacific on the grounds that it was too low.

Centaurus has been joined at SSE by other hedge funds such as Lansdowne, GLG and Odey Asset Management.

Oppetit is known in the City as a canny investor and has built up Centaurus into a £5bn fund after leaving BNP Paribas, where he was head of proprietary trading. On its website, Centaurus says: ‘We develop a close and constructive ongoing dialogue with the executives of the companies that we invest in, and focus on achieving an in-depth fundamental understanding of their businesses.’

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The Money Times- A $100 million here, a $100 million there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real compensation. U.K.-based hedge fund manager GLG Partners (NYSE: GLG) announced today that it has hired Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) partner Driss Ben-Brahim. In 2006, Ben-Brahim sent the London press into a frenzy when it was reported that he earned a $100 million payday.

With those kinds of numbers being thrown around, leaving Goldman might look like an odd decision, but Ben-Brahim can always point to the man whose shoes he’ll be filling. GLG is losing its highest-profile portfolio manager, Greg Coffey, who is walking away from a $250 million stock payday to launch his own fund.

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The Independent- The American hedge fund group Harbinger Capital Partners revealed that it has made a significant bet on HBOS’s price falling, while its UK counterpart GLG admitted it is targeting the rival mortgage bank Bradford & Bingley, as investors were forced yesterday to disclose their short positions to the market for the first time.

The Financial Services Authority shocked the trading community a fortnight ago when it announced that investors would be compelled to disclose short positions of more than 0.25 per cent of share capital in companies carrying out rights issues.

The announcements started on Friday, and continued yesterday with 20 investors, predominantly hedge funds, disclosing short positions in seven companies that are in the process of carrying out rights issues.

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