The Top Ten Hedge Fund Stories of 2010

The hedge fund industry is still dominated by America in terms of where the majority of assets are directed and invested. So I have given due weighting to U.S. focused stories in the top ten for the year – they are the first five stories, published by trade press in the States. My own viewpoint and concerns put global and regional stories into the top ten for the year – they are the second five stories here.

Expert Network Insider Trading

Hedge funds' use of so-called expert networks was called into question in late November when more than a dozen money managers were issued subpoenas for information related to a vast government investigation of insider trading.

Among those asked for information—but not accused of wrongdoing—were SAC Capital Advisors, Diamondback Capital Management, Level Global Investors and Loch Capital Management. All stressed they were subjects, not targets of the investigation (the latter, which means the government is likely to bring charges, would likely cause massive redemptions). Loch, which did not respond to a request for comment, is laying off most of its staff by year end, according to Hedge Fund Alert. Firms like Loch and Balyasny Asset Management, which was also subpoenaed, suspended their use of third party research firms as a result.

Drunkenmiller Quits but Team Lives On	"I have had to recognize that competing in the markets over such a long time frame imposes heavy personal costs," Druckenmiller wrote in a one-page letter announcing his plans to retire and close the firm, also citing the challenges of running a large fund.

Duquesne was reportedly down 5% at the time, which would have been the fund's first losing year in 30 if it did not snap back by year end, having returned an average 30% annually since 1986. As of November, fund returns had indeed turned positive, according to Bloomberg.

A group of former Duquesne Capital Management managers prepared to start a new global macro fund, Point State Capital, which will oversee roughly $5 billion, one of the largest launches ever, Bloomberg reported in November. The funds come entirely from Druckenmiller ($1 billion) and former Duquesne investors. In addition Wojtek Uzdelewicz, a Duquesne managing director who ran a roughly $500 million technology focused fund at the firm, plans to launch a fund, Espalier Global Management in New York City.

The Goldman-Paulson CDO Scandal Goldman settled with the SEC in July for $550 million, the largest ever penalty from Wall Street. John Paulson, for his part, was never dragged into the legal mess despite initial concerns that led him to let investors know that he was prepared for a possible legal battle and would personally cover any legal fees. One of those key facts, the SEC said, was failing to disclose the role that Paulson & Co. played in the portfolio selection process and the fact that the hedge fund had taken a short position against the product (Paulson made about $1 billion on the bet). In April, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Goldman Sachs with defrauding investors by "misstating and omitting key facts about a financial product tied to subprime mortgages as the U.S. housing market was beginning to falter." FrontPoint's Annus Horribilis FrontPoint Partners, the once highly successful hedge fund firm, had a difficult year. In October, FrontPoint announced it was spinning out from Morgan Stanley, which had acquired the firm in 2006 when it managed $5.5 billion but was concerned about new hedge fund investment restrictions under the Dodd-Frank Act. But as FrontPoint restructured, an insider trading scandal hit its healthcare hedge fund, causing the suspension of portfolio manager Chip Skowron and the liquidation of the fund. FrontPoint faced large redemptions—reportedly as much as $3 billion of $7.5 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal—from skittish investors as the insider trading probe spread to more than a dozen hedge funds and put unwanted attention on the use of expert information networks. Buffett's Hedgie Successor Until late October, Todd Combs was a successful but largely unknown manager of a small Greenwich, Connecticut hedge fund. But Combs was thrust into the spotlight with the announcement that Warren Buffett has chosen him to manage a large chunk of Berkshire Hathaway's roughly $100 billion investment portfolio, one of the most high-profile money management positions in the world. Combs, 39, ran Castle Point Capital Management, a financials-focused long/short equity fund launched in November 2005 that managed $405 million as of September. The fund was down 3.93% through September, with a net annualized performance since inception of 5.93%, unspectacular performance compared with its peers. Hedge Fund UCITS Mushroom Whilst service providers and some of the managers were over-excited about the prospects of UCITS versions of hedge funds last year, in 2010 there have been some strong growth trends. There are now around 350 UCITS hedge funds, most of which have mildly amended mandates of the mother (offshore) fund. There have been some UCITS only fund launches, but not many. Early evidence is that UCITS provide a solution to the major drawback of hedge funds that was revealed in the Credit Crunch – the ability to deal in the funds at will. 76% of UCITS hedge funds offer daily liquidity, 21% offer weekly liquidity. The buyers of UCITS hedge funds are client types that put a premium on this positive feature – HNWIs that were much aggrieved at being locked into offshore hedge funds and are buying through wealth management networks; and insurance companies that have problems of admissability of assets when putting capital into offshore funds. UCITS hedge funds manage €27bn of capital. JP Morgan takes a BRIC Hedge Fund Bias JP Morgan's 2004 partial takeover of Highbridge Capital for $1.3bn was the deal which said that institutional flows into hedge funds were believed to be for real and for some time. Eventually Morgan bought all of Highbridge. In October this year JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to acquire a majority stake in Brazil's Gavea Investimentos Ltda., the fund manager founded by former Brazilian central banker Arminio Fraga. Gávea Investimentos has $5.1bn AUM invested in hedge funds and illiquid investments, and has a staff of 103 people. The hedge fund industry in Brazil is dominated by bank-run domestic retail flows, but JP Morgan likes the international appeal of Brazilian hedge funds. There are many international investors who use Brazil as a proxy for the best of the BRICs – high employment and industrial production growth, an appreciating currency, a relatively sound fiscal position and a commodity play to boot. One of the lessons of the post-Crunch period has been that the appeal of emerging markets to investors in developed markets has recovered as well as the prices of iron ore and coffee. Has the JP Morgan deal for Gavea confirmed that emerging market flows are for real and for some time? Renaissance is Back In 2006-7 there was a feeling abroad that Renaissance Technologies was going to eat the lunch of a lot of hedge funds by soaking up the flows into the industry as it looked to take in as much as $100bn into the Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund (RIEF). However the large capital inflows turned into outflows when RIEF was down 16% in 2008 and down 7% in 2009. The Renaissance Institutional Futures Fund (RIFF) fared no better in 2008 - it was down 12% when most CTAs were up on the year. The reverse happened last year – RIFF was up 5% and most CTAs were down. Overall firm assets were down 25% last year, and to cap it all founder James Simons retired as CEO at the end of 2009. After successor co-CEOs Peter Brown and Robert Mercer considered closing the two institutional products, it as well they didn't. This year RIEF International - Series B is up 17.00% YTD, and the Renaissance Institutional Futures Fund is up 17.14%. The latter fund did well enough on a 12-month risk adjusted return basis to win the Best Managed Futures Fund at the AR Awards in November. Renaissance is back. The Eurocrats Take a Grip In America the intense interest of politicians, regulators and the media was such that Anthony Scaramucci, founder of fund of funds Skybridge Capital, said "We have felt like a piñata - We certainly felt like we've been whacked with a stick." But it is the European end of the industry that will suffer more from actual interference. The politicians and Eurocrats have wilfully failed to understand the significance of their proposals, despite lobbying and submissions from the industry. The hedge fund industry gives employment, tax revenues and invisible export earnings – in return the industry got proposals treating all management companies as publicly quoted, regulations on how private companies should pay their employees, damaging increased disclosure of short positions, and little-island-thinking that would have created a fence around the European hedge fund industry. On top of that the UK, home to most of the European industry, increased tax rates to an extent that it has pushed some hedge fund companies and leaders into other tax jurisdictions. The country, continent and industry are not the lands of opportunity they were. Recovery by Madoff Receiver The story which has come back with new developments through the year is the efforts of receiver in the case of the Madoff ponzi scheme, Irving Picard, to recover cash from the 2,000 or so net beneficiaries of the scheme. These are the investors who withdrew more money than they invested with the fraudster, and around a thousand of them have been in the sights of the receiver. The list of banks, intermediaries, investors, friends of Madoff and counterparties to receive suits form Picard is long. Some have been obvious targets, like the 34 affiliates with ties to Madoff feeder fund Fairfield Greenwich Group. But he has been very thorough and looked through to where the "profits" have been deployed. For example, in July the court-appointed trustee took aim at three Madoff family entities, a family fund, an oil and gas properties business and a trading business, seeking $30 million that the family had invested in them. As the deadline approached for the receiver – he had until the 11th December, the two-year-anniversary of Madoff's arrest, to file the suits – activity accelerated. Picard reached a $625m settlement with Boston billionaire and philanthropist Carl Shapiro this month, and on the last day for possible filings, the receiver filed a suit against Austrian banker Sonja Kohn and dozens of firms linked to her for $19.6 billion—all of the principal he estimates was lost by Madoff's investors and more than twice as much as he has sought in any of the thousands of other lawsuits he has filed since Madoff's arrest two years ago. The single biggest settlement to date was $7.2 billion from the estate of Madoff investor Jeffry Picower.

 

John Paulson on the Benefits of Activism

John  Paulson

John Paulson may have made been the subject of the book "The Greatest Trade Ever" about his shorting of (residential) mortgage-backed securities, but that trade was as typical for him as Michael Steinhardt going long U.S. Treasuries in 1981. Steinhardt was an analytical equity investor betting his reputation on an unfamiliar asset class in government bonds. Paulson's deep experience was in something else too*.

John Paulson's professional background is in mergers and acquisitions, and so it was natural that the investment strategy in which he came to specialise was risk arbitrage, first with Bear Stearns and then Gruss Partners, before he opened his eponymous firm. As with many practitioners who go on to play other stages of the event cycle, risk arbitrage led to exposure to distressed bonds, and eventually to the full panoply of event investing of divestitures, recapitalizations and other company reorganizations and financings.

So it is the associated specialism of activist investing that is covered here with John Paulson. This is a written form of a presentation he made a few years ago on the topic . Whilst the principles of what John Paulson describes are still valid, the aftermath of the Credit Crunch makes comments on real estate and banking anachronistic in today's market conditions.

Simon Kerr, December 2010





Paulson & Company is an event arbitrage firm, and we have been in business 15 years and activist investing is not our only activity but is in an important part of our investment strategies. I'm going to talk today about the benefits of activism.

Activism is good for the stock market. It is good for investors and is also good for business and is good for corporate governance.



The Benefits of Activism

One: The first benefit, and primary benefit, of activism is to increase shareholder value. We get involved when a stock is trading at a discount to its true value. Through activist strategies we seek to realise that value.

Two: The second goal, and as important as realising shareholder value, is to improve corporate governance. Unfortunately there are situations where corporate Boards or managements don't always act in the best interests of the stockholders. Activists make sure that all shareholders are treated fairly and properly.

Three: Another benefit is that activist investing carries out a role on behalf of other investors. We might have to act alone, and we might own only 5 or 10% of a company, but when he share price goes up all investors in the company benefit. That helps individual investors who don't have the time or resources to act in this way. It also benefits pension funds and other institutional investors that can't get involved for political reasons or because it is outside their mandate. But I would say that in many if not most of the situations in which we get involved we are clearly getting the support of institutional investors. Even if they are somewhat constrained in coming out and saying so publicly, they are supportive of the goals we are trying to achieve.

Four: Activism keeps management and boards focussed on shareholders' interests. Prior to activist investing Boards acted in their own interests. It used to be that the only thing shareholders could do when they didn't agree with what was going was to sell the stock. Activism gives shareholders a voice, and makes management listen.

I believe it also creates companies stronger. Many times what leads to an activist situation is where a company management is pursuing a strategy that that they are reluctant to let go of. Shedding loss-making operations and merging with other companies to get to global scale, in the end, does result in stronger, more competitive and more profitable companies.

Five: Activist investing also removes inertia. You can't just accept the status quo. If management have been doing something for a long time and are happy with it, that is not good enough. Management have to be accountable and activist investors showing up forces management to be accountable.



Why is There a Need for Activism?

The primary reason for activism is that in public companies there can be divergent interests between owners of the business and management. In many public companies, particularly in cases of very old, established companies, the board members and management frequently own de minimis amounts of stock. So their decision-making criteria for running the company are other than those which are best for company shareholders. Frequently they are focussed on the perks of running a large public corporation. Many times they like their cushy jobs, they like all their perks and the prestige that go along with the positions they hold. Ideally the Boards want to be left to run the company - they view shareholders as bothersome.

In some of the old companies the Boards can become very insular. Many times the Boards don't have any stock at all. They are reluctant to incorporate change. Then there is a need for an activist to get involved.



The Criteria We Look for in an Activist Situation

1. The company is trading at a deep discount to fair value
   
   If the company is doing the right thing, the shares are trading at a full value and the shares are trading at a high P/E, then there is no need for an activist to get involved. However if it is trading at 50% discount to fair value, if it is pursuing strategies that have failed, if it is under-performing and the sum-of-the-parts is at premium to current traded values then that attracts the activist investor.
   
   
    
2. Strategic Initiatives Available
   
   There have to be readily implementable strategic alternatives to unlock that value (some examples will follow). So we look for a discount and a situation where if management took action that discount could be quickly eliminated. Typically the management has been reluctant to act, simply because they don't want to change things. The activist investor comes in and acts as a positive catalyst for positive change.
   

Why Would the Company be Under-valued?

Why would a company be undervalued to the extent that an activist could get involved? The most common reason is that the company is in disparate businesses. Some of the businesses are weaker than the others. The sum of parts is greater than the value of the whole, and the remedial strategies are not always seen as readily implementable.

Examples:

The sum of the parts was greater than the whole. Take as an example Cadbury Schweppes. In the U.S. beverage business it was an also-ran in market share, but it had an attractive confectionary business. Combined as a public company they traded at a discount to the fair value.

Sainsbury's had very valuable real estate and the management was reluctant to separate that real estate element from the retail operations. It traded at a big discount to the asset value of the business. (Property investor) Robert Tchenguiz showed up on the share register and highlighted that differential, and the stock appreciated significantly.

In (Dutch company) Stork – another situation where they were in many disparate businesses - people that wanted the individual businesses didn't want the whole rag-bag of businesses, and as a consequence the shares traded at a very significant discount.

Then there are situations where the track-record of the management is poor. Though there are pieces of the company that are valuable, investors lose confidence in the management, and as a result don't attach a high multiple to the stock. Two situations come to mind – Ahold from Holland and ABN AMRO, the Dutch bank. Both companies, for different reasons, had underperformed in stock market. There were actions that could be taken to highlight the value, but the managements needed some pressure from shareholders to do something about it.

We also see situations where managements are not focussed on shareholder value. It could be through no fault of management, but that the private market value is very different from the public market value. A ready example is the real estate sector. Real estate can be capitalised at very high multiples of cash-flow, but generally the public market looks at multiples of earnings. You can't get full value for real estate assets in the public market.

So for example, Ahold had a fair amount of real estate and the shares traded at approximately 7 ½ x EBITDA. Yet real estate transactions are being done at over 20x EBITDA. So put the real estate in a public company and the market gives it 7 ½; separate the real estate, sell it to someone privately, and you can get 20x. Some deals were done recently at approaching 24x EBITDA. The latter deals had cap rates as low as three and a half percent. That is the incentive - the difference between public and private valuations. For the retailers it is not necessarily a problem of management, but a difference in value can be realised through re-structuring, tax treatments and other considerations.



Activism Need Not be Confrontational

Many people see that activism has to be confrontational. That is not the case - some of our best investments have been where we have been working together with management, outside of the public eye, to enhance value. For example, a fund was written up in the newspaper yesterday: Blue Harbour is an activist investor that only does friendly transactions. They buy a stake in situations which are under-valued, and where they believe strategic re-structuring will add value, and then they work with management collaboratively to achieve that goal.

We have worked with managements at Ahold and The Mirant Corporation constructively. Actions the management have taken have added value in both cases.

In Cadbury and Laidlaw we have worked in a non-confrontational manner. Generally it is important for management to listen to shareholder concerns: when investors make a point that is valid, it is up to management to respond to those concerns and help to realise that value.



But Management Can Defend Aggressively

In the ideal situation, you take a stake and management greet you with open arms, and you agree to enhance shareholder value, but sometimes management is very confrontational. Sometimes the Board and management don't like being told what to do, and the management take action which harms shareholder value. I will refer to two recent examples.

After ABN AMRO granted exclusive negotiating rights with Barclays, RBS indicated an interest to pursue an acquisition. ABN AMRO management said they couldn't negotiate with RBS because of the exclusivity agreement with Barclays. That exclusivity period expired, and even knowing the RBS interest, ABN AMRO management then extended that exclusivity period. They used that second period to negotiate what was effectively a poison pill: they arrange to sell the prize asset which RBS was after (LaSalle Bank) to Bank of America. This made it almost impossible for RBS to pursue the deal they wanted with ABN AMRO.

ABN AMRO was refusing a deal at a higher price so they could choose the buyer that they wanted to sell to. This was done though many shareholders in ABN AMRO did not want this to happen. This is thankfully rare, where management use scorched-earth tactics to destroy value in order to serve their own interests.

Thankfully ABN AMRO were taken to court by Dutch shareholder group, VEB, and the shareholder group won. In order to sell even some of the the assets ABN AMRO management needed shareholder approval. Without that activism on the part of the Dutch shareholders association the incremental value in the asset sale would not have been realized.


Another hostile situation where were involved was Stork – this was a deeply undervalued businesses on a sum-of-the-parts basis. It traded at a 50% discount to fair value of the component parts on a peer group public company basis. It was in chicken processing, aerospace, oil services, and believe it or not scores of other businesses at well. So there could no corporate buyers of the whole company, because buyers of oil services did not want a chicken business. We believed the best and most promising business in the group was aerospace. We suggested either splitting into three businesses or building the group around the core aerospace business.

The Board refused to listen to us, even though we owned up to 35% of the shares, and the Board owned no stock. We said that that was unfair, and let's put it to a shareholder vote. At the shareholder meeting 89% of the votes at that meeting were for the change in strategy. The Board refused to listen to the voice of the meeting and said the Board make strategy not shareholders. So we called another meeting to replace the Board. To deny our rights the Board then initiated a poison pill – issuing super voting preferred stock to themselves. The preferred would represent the majority of votes if the issue was allowed. We had to take the company court. We argued that the poison pill was originally put in place to stop an unwarranted takeover, not to prevent shareholders from voting. The court agreed with us and threw out the pill. We are now in the process of trying to negotiate something with Stork. Our preference is always to do something collaboratively rather than confrontationally, but unfortunately it doesn't always work out that way. And we have to act to protect our interests on those occasions.



Examples of Activist Positions of Paulson & Company

Cadbury – a great company. In two businesses: it is a world leader in confectionary, but also had a substantial but sub-scale drinks business. Everyone knew that it was in the interests of shareholders that the businesses split – the best strategy was thought to be to sell the drinks businesses and concentrate on confectionary. Once Nelson Peltz declared his stake management realized the logic and immediately announced they would consider separation of the businesses. The stock jumped almost 40% in a few months of the announcement of the split of the businesses. Incidentally Nelson Peltz had good knowledge of the situation as he had sold Snapple Beverages to Cadbury five years previously.

ABN AMRO – over the five years prior to the involvement of the The Childrens' Investment Fund the stock had moved sideways whilst the banking sector was up substantially. ABN AMRO share appreciated 40% in a few months after the TCI stake became public knowledge. This shows the benefit of an activist stirring the pot. Shareholders had been disgruntled with ABN AMRO management for some time. It was a big bank, but it had pursued a strategy of being a small player in a lot of different markets. It was one of the largest banks in the world, but it had a tiny operation in the U.S., it had small operations in Italy, in Brazil, and the Middle East. That situation does not create operational strength, or allow for synergies, or allow for expanded margins. Contrast that with those banks that had large shares of deposits in its markets. Large shares of deposits in a banking market leads to profitability, so although ABN AMRO had grown it had not created value.

Ahold – the re-structuring activity in Ahold took the shares up 50% at the same time that the retail index was up 5%. The company does well operationally in Holland and Sweden but poorly in the US. As a consequence the shares traded at a discount to the sum of the parts. We proposed selling off or spinning-out the under-performing US operations, to focus on the successful European operations. We believed that that would create shareholder value. They were responsive. They sold off the US food service operations, and received much more than anyone expected – some $7bn. They bought back stock with the proceeds. The story doesn't end there because management are considering other initiatives which came from the activist shareholders. We have met with management and they have listened.

The Mirant Corporation - a very successful situation as the shares are up over 100% in a year, and Paulson & Company was the largest shareholder. Mirant, an Atlanta-based power company, itself had come out of bankruptcy and had a new CEO. They announced that they wanted to buy another utility with stock, but their own shares were trading at a discount to the sum-of the-parts, and they were proposing to acquire the target company at a premium. It was a very dilutive acquisition proposal.

The proposal drew very sharp criticism from nearly all the existing Mirant shareholders. Ed Muller, the CEO, was surprised, but he listened to shareholders, and dropped the proposal within a week. He then reached out to shareholders, and met with us and other large shareholders individually. We explained that we thought they should do is sell off their non-core assets and concentrate on the Mid-Atlantic utility business. Rather like ABN AMRO they had bits of businesses all over the place. It had utilities in the Philippines, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Bahamas and in the U.S. in Texas, in California and in other states.

After meeting with us he realized that the best thing to do was to hire bankers and sell off the widespread operations, and concentrate on the core utility business. He sold the Philippines assets to Tokyo Electric; he sold the Caribbean assets to Marubeni; he sold the non-core US assets to a private equity group. It was our most successful activist position, and it was done with a collaborative approach to management.



Summary: Benefits of Activism

• Activism Improves Valuation for Everyone
  
• It Frequently Results in Better Governance
  
• Activism Creates More Efficient Companies
  
• It Removes Inertia
  
• Activist Investing Holds Management Accountable
  

*Before he began his investment career, John Paulson accumulated academic distinctions. He was Valedictorian of his class at New York University's College of Business and Public Administration and received his MBA from Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar, the school's distinction for the class' top students. After a stint as a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, he joined Odyssey Partners as an Associate and moved on to Bear Stearns in 1984 where he became a Managing Director in mergers and acquisitions. In 1988, he became a general partner of Gruss Partners. In 1994, he started Paulson Partners L.P., and in 1996, Paulson International Ltd., a companion offshore fund. In 2001, the firm launched a leveraged version of its funds. Based in New York, Paulson & Co. currently manages $33.6bn, up from $700 million in July 2003.

For a European take on activism read about Cevian Capital on this blog or at The Hedge Fund Journal

Major New York Hedge Funds Join Lawsuit v Porsche

Eighteen investment funds today joined the lawsuit against Porsche Automobil Holding SE asserting fraud and securities manipulation in relation to Porsche SE’s failed 2008 attempt to take over Volkswagen AG. With the addition of the new plaintiffs, the now 35 funds seek to recover more than $2 billion dollars in losses. The 18 funds that joined the lawsuit are part of 6 fund families: Canyon Capital, D.E. Shaw, Greenlight Capital, Ironbound Partners, Royal Capital, and Tiger Global.


The Amended Complaint, filed this morning in Manhattan federal court, explains in greater detail how Porsche SE manipulated the price of VW stock as it secretly cornered the market in VW shares. According to the Amended Complaint, Porsche SE hid that it was cornering the market in VW’s freely traded shares by repeatedly issuing misleading statements about its activities and by spreading purchases of call options around to several counterparties to avoid detection of its increasing control. The scheme induced the plaintiff funds to establish short positions on VW stock. When Porsche SE suddenly revealed the extent of its true control of VW shares on October 26, 2008, a massive short squeeze ensued. The price of VW shares skyrocketed several hundred percent, briefly topping 1,000 Euros. Investors who had shorted VW lost billions covering their positions in the squeeze. Porsche SE collected outrageous profits at the expense of plaintiffs and others by releasing some of its shares into the market at artificial prices.

  

Today’s filing reveals previously unknown details of Porsche SE’s plan. The new allegations include that:

• Less than a week before Porsche SE revealed the truth—that it had amassed control of more than 74 percent of VW’s shares— it conducted phone calls with investment advisors in New York during which Porsche SE sought to reassure the New York-based investment advisors that it was nowhere near 75 percent control. Among the false statements Porsche SE made was that although it would acquire a simple majority of VW shares, "going to 75% is not on the agenda." Porsche SE told another fund that it would stop acquiring shares after achieving 50–55% control.  
• Porsche SE admitted to at least one plaintiff that it was spreading its options trades around to multiple counterparties to avoid detection.
• Porsche SE’s fraudulent strategy deliberately targeted short sellers. In order to secretly obtain 75 percent ownership in VW, Porsche needed short sellers to borrow stock from owners who would not or could not sell the stock themselves and then to sell it to Porsche or Porsche's call-option counterparties. Without the additional supply created by short sellers, Porsche could never have gained control of 75 percent.  
• Porsche SE financed its call-option strategy in part through selling put options. As the price of VW declined in the third week of October 2008, Porsche SE’s liability on the puts it had sold threatened to force the company into bankruptcy. It avoided this threat by forcing the price of VW up, which it accomplished by announcing its call-option position on October 26, triggering the squeeze.

The case is pending in the Southern District of New York, where it is captioned as Elliott Associates, L.P., et al, v. Porsche Automobil Holding SE, et al, No. 10-civ-532 (HB)(THK).

The funds are represented by Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott LLP (see www.bartlit-beck.com) and Kleinberg, Kaplan, Wolf & Cohen, P.C. (www.kkwc.com).