Legendary activist Daniel Loeb's Third Point to float on LSE

Who's Daniel Loeb -> Bloomberg magazine article PDF: http://ddo.typepad.com/ddo/files/DanLoeb_Bloomberg.pdf

"Third Point plans London listing"
By James Mackintosh in London
Published: June 13 2007 22:43 | Last updated: June 13 2007 22:43

Daniel Loeb’s Third Point Capital will Thursday announce plans to list a €500m-€700m hedge fund in London in the first move by a US hedge fund to raise money from European equity investors.

The move by the €5bn ($6.7bn) Third Point demonstrates confidence in demand for listed hedge funds following the disappointing €770m float of the first London main market hedge fund in March by Brevan Howard, the London manager. Other funds have listed in Amsterdam or on London’s Aim while Man Group has announced plans for a New York-listed fund. The listing – of Third Point Offshore Investors, a Guernsey-based company that will invest exclusively in Third Point’s main hedge fund – also brings one of New York’s most aggressive activists to London.

Mr Loeb is known for letters in which he berates executives. In one letter, he expressed shock at the provision of “anything more than subway tokens” to a chief executive in receipt of a $53,000 car allowance. The listed vehicle – designed to diversify the fund’s investor base which already comes primarily from Europe – is expected to draw in mostly new investors. The existing fund is closed, making the listed fund the only way into Third Point. Fees are identical, at 2 per cent a year and 20 per cent of profits, while Third Point pays the listing costs. Mr Loeb, 45, does not appear worried about the increased disclosure requirements from a stock market listing.

“The genie’s already out of the bottle,” he told the FT, pointing out Third Point had registered voluntarily with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “I haven’t exactly been a shrinking violet with . . . some of the companies we deal with.” While Third Point, founded in 1995, is best-known for its activism, many of its discussions with management take place behind closed doors. It operates as an event-driven fund, looking for undervalued companies it believes will be boosted by restructuring either already planned or which it can persuade management to adopt.

In Europe, Mr Loeb said he held DaimlerChrysler, Philips and Infineon, had met their chief executives and had no plans to take an activist stance against them. “I wouldn’t step into Dr Z’s shoes and tell them to do anything different,” he said of Dieter Zetsche, chief executive of DaimlerChrysler.

The listing is being led by UBS and Société Générale.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/50b4053c-19e5-11dc-99c5-000b5df10621.html

 

I must read one article a week saying that some guy is the most sucessful investor in the last x years

 

They just change the metrics by which success is measured. With enough parameters I could probably classify myself as the most successful investor in the last X years as could you no doubt and the other handful of profitable traders on ET

 

heeh I also loved the part about "sipping chilled Gewürztraminer"

 

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2007/06/14/5195/daniel-loebs-edited-highlights/

Daniel Loeb’s edited highlights

News that Third Point, the activist hedge fund led by Daniel Loeb, is to list a €500m-€700m fund in London brings the undisputed master of the poison pen to the UK’s shores.

Known for his abrasive turn of phrase,and venomous tongue, Loeb is among the highest profile, and surely the most entertaining, activists at work in the US. So this is an excellent time to look back at some of his finest work.

Loeb

There is, from last year, a letter to Nabi Biopharmaceutials in which he wrote: “Rest assured: our silence since receiving your flaccid response should not be interpreted as reduced focus on our position in Nabi….. you hide your heads in the nearest warm aperture in an apparent “ostrich defense” and ignore your shareholders (the top three now owning over 28% of your shares in aggregate) in the hope that the Company’s owners will go away before your next annual meeting.”

Also, there’s an open letter to Salton from 2005: “What is most astounding about the Company’s apparent death spiral is Mr. Dreimann’s inexplicably insouciant attitude and the fact that he remains in charge….

“The conference call debacle pales in comparison to what I witnessed last summer when I attended the U.S. Open tennis final. You can only imagine my consternation when I looked around the stadium and saw the Salton name emblazoned all around the interior of the stadium walls next to such robust companies as IBM, JP Morgan and Mass Mutual. I had to wonder how much precious capital had been squandered in such a poorly conceived marketing scheme to promote the Salton name when the Company was in such dire financial straits. My bewilderment quickly turned to anger when I saw the crowd seeking autographs from the Olsen twins just below the private box that seemed to be occupied by Mr. Dreimann and others who were enjoying the match and summer sun while hobnobbing, snacking on shrimp cocktails and sipping chilled Gewurztraminer.”

He wrote earlier this year in a missive to PDL Biopharma, “many fund managers who have been similarly rebuffed, and who have detected such a deficit in talent, probity and judgement as we have come to find in Mr McDade, might come to the logical conclusion to “cut and run”…..Instead we have come to a different view: we concluded that the Board of Directors has no choice but to immediately terminate Mr McDade,” before going on to attack the company’s corporate head quarters, dubbing them the “Taj Mahal,” and accusing Mr McDade of being “fixated” on when his berth in the adjacent marina would be ready.

Companies are not the only recipients of Mr Loeb’s sarcasm and aggressive prose. He fell out with Ken Griffin in 2005, after the Citadel boss snared an analyst from a rival firm.

Also infamous is his email exchange with a potential recruit, where he levelled this accusation at the hapless applicant: “We find most brits are a bit set in their ways and prefer to knock back a pint at the pub and go shooting on weekend rather than work hard.”

We won’t take it personally. Welcome to Blighty.

Also, don't miss this link of Loeb bashing a job applicant via email: http://www.bankersball.com/2007/04/14/daniel-loeb-recruit-email/ This is awesome, sit back and read

 

http://www.investegate.co.uk/Article.aspx?id=200706140701093383Y

Looks like the IPO is going to start trading at the end of July