Trouble has been brewing at Pacific Investment Management Company, LLC (PIMCO) for some time, and investors have taken notice. PIMCO is one of the largest asset managers in the world, with over $1.9 trillion in assets under management. While the PIMCO Total Return Bond Fund is the largest bond fund in the world, the firm also offers asset management services across real assets, private equity, and global equities.
Facebook Aims to Retaliate Against DLA Piper and Other Firms
On Monday, October 20th Facebook filed charges against DLA Piper along with several other firms and attorneys that had represented Paul Ceglia in an earlier suit opposing Facebook. The October 20 lawsuit, filed in the New York Supreme Court, is based largely on facts pertaining to a 2010 action in which Ceglia sued Facebook.
Fun and Games or Serious Business? Dave & Buster’s Goes Public
Dave & Buster’s Entertainment, an arcade and restaurant chain, made its public market debut on October 9th after being privately owned for 8 years. The IPO was priced at $16 a share, on the lower end of the expected range of $16 to $18. The shares began trading the following day on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol “PLAY.”
European Commission Fines Four Major Banks for Cartel Behavior
On October 21, 2014, the European Commission fined JPMorgan, UBS, and Credit Suisse over 94 million euros (about $120 million) for participation in two distinct cartels involving the Swiss franc. In both of these cases, the banks agreed to settle with the Commission.
SolarCity Corp. Issues Bonds To Raise Money For More Clean Energy
SolarCity, whose stocks are traded on NASDAQ, operates in the area of installation and deployment of energy efficiency products and services. It is the biggest firm in the US operating in residential solar systems solutions alongside Sungevity and Vivint Solar.
A Rare Occurrence in Hedge Fund Takeover
Unlimited bread sticks and disappointing shares helped contribute to the demise of the entire board of Darden Restaurants, Inc. on October 10, 2014. As Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law simply put it, “We have an epic fail, the entire board replaced, which almost never, never happens.”
Private Equity Firms Alter Capital Structure Granting Access to Individual Investors
Traditionally, private equity investments such as buy-outs have been investment vehicles open to a restricted asset class—usually large pension funds, insurance firms, and university endowments. Recently, however, private equity fundraising platforms are looking to high-net-worth individual investors to supplement capital funds previously almost exclusively comprised of institutional investors.
Legality of ECB’s Bond-Buying Program: Does the Limit Exist?
On September 6, 2012, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi announced a bond-buying program in an attempt to lower the borrowing costs of struggling Eurozone countries (e.g., Spain and Italy) and to prevent the potentially worst-case scenario of a currency breakup. The program, called Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT), targeted government bonds with maturities of one to three years and longer-dated debt with a remaining maturity of that length. Draghi emphasized that the ECB would not have seniority status on the debt and purchases would be fully sterilized, meaning a neutral impact on the overall money supply.
Pershing Square Holdings Ltd. IPO
On Monday, October 13, Pershing Square Holdings Ltd., a fund managed by activist investor Bill Ackman, held its initial public offering on EuroNext Amsterdam. The offering, priced at $25 per share, raised $2.73 billion in capital for Pershing Square Holdings, raising its total assets to $3.07 billion and its value to $6.2 billion. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP – the parent company of Pershing Square Holdings Ltd. – follows other hedge funds including Brevan Howard Asset Management LLP and Third Point LLC in selling shares of individual funds.
#Transparency: Twitter’s Fight to Disclose Information about Federal Surveillance Activities
The latest salvo has been fired in the war between U.S. communications providers and the federal government regarding restrictions on how companies may disclose information about big brother’s surveillance of their customers.