Naturally, Fox Business’s Senior Steakhouse Correspondent is on it: Continue reading »
Steve Cohen
Charlie Gasparino: Steve Cohen Broke Bread With Chris Christie At Quality Meats Last Night
By Bess LevinConfidential To Bud Selig: Watch Your Mouth Or He’ll Buy The Whole Fucking National League
By Bess Levin
Steven Cohen may yet own the Los Angeles Dodgers. But he still hasn’t given up hope of buying a chunk of his favorite baseball team. The SAC Capital Advisors founder is expected to buy one of the 4% stakes in the New York Mets currently on offer. The Mets plan to sell 10 such stakes—although the team’s current owners plan to buy at least two of the slices—to raise $200 million in an effort to pay down the team’s huge debt, while simultaneously allowing Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz to maintain control of the team…Buying the Mets stake would not keep Cohen from buying the Dodgers—although if he wins the latter, he’d have to sell the Mets share. That could make him a very short-lived Mets owner, as Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is expected to pick his successor by April 1. [FINalternatives]
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Hedge Funds
Steve: Remember That Not Getting An MLB Team Can Sometimes Be A Wonderful Stroke Of Luck
By Bess Levin
Over the weekend, the LA Times reported that a group headed by Steve Cohen was among those that advanced to the second round of bidding for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Mark Cuban, “veteran baseball executive” Dennis Gilbert, and former Dodgers players Steve Garvey and Orel Hershiser are out; at the top of Cohen’s elimination list remain Magic Johnson and Joe Torre. Obviously, we have no idea whether or not the SAC Capital manager will emerge victorious. Either way, though, something about all this has been troubling us: namely how acquiring a baseball team figures into SC’s long-term plans. Continue reading »
Yesterday we all learned a valuable lesson about what happens when you address Steven A. Cohen as “Stevie” in the presence of his outside counsel, Martin Klotz, as evidenced by a recently unsealed deposition (you get one warning and then you end up in the trunk of a 1987 Cadillac Sedan De Ville, is what). Unfortunately, crucial dialogue between Klotz and Michael Bowe, the Fairfax Financial lawyer who was questioning Cohen, was cut off. And that part was just as important. You see, just because you can’t call him Stevie, doesn’t mean you can just call him anything you want, unless you’re okay with getting Sonny Corleone’d the next time you drive through a toll plaza without EZ Pass. Continue reading »
I was a little tickled to read this morning that Ben Bernanke had refinanced his mortgage at around the same time the Fed announced Operation Twist in September. There are a couple of ways to read this story. One is that a hard-working and heavily mortgaged civil servant, savvy about the macroeconomy and the rates markets, decided that long-term fixed rates were as low as they are likely to be for a while and so September was a good time to refinance. The other is, as Simone Foxman tongue-in-cheek puts it, “Bernanke Personally Cashed In On Operation Twist.” Conspiracy theories abound with Bernanke, and I’m sure somebody somewhere really thinks that Ben Bernanke intentionally put the U.S. on a path to the Weimar-style hyperinflation that is coming any day now just to save a hundred bucks a month on his mortgage payments, but…I’m with her that it’s an amusing coincidence.
If you like a slightly different flavor of conspiracy, though, you might ask: why wasn’t Bernanke refinancing in, say, July or August? Sure, maybe he was busy with the whole stewardship of the economy and/or after-dinner Kindle reading. Or maybe he knew that the Fed was going to move to lower long-term rates and so abstained from trading based on that. Maybe he was taking advantage of his insider knowledge to make a personal profit, or at least avoid a loss.
Or not, whatever, what a stupid thing to think. But I thought of it again when I read Mr. Steven A. Cohen’s cogent argument that insider trading rules are somewhat more ambiguous than the proper form of address for him: Continue reading »
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Posted in:
Nicknames
SAC Capital Lawyer Martin Klotz Showed Enormous Restraint In Not Dealing With This Guy By Driving Him Out To The Pine Barrens
By Bess Levin
Quick story or not so much a story but a pet peeve I’ve never gotten off my chest: I hate when people use the nickname “Stevie” when referring to hedge fund manager Steve Cohen. It’s like nails on a chalkboard when anyone says it but particularly when deployed by total strangers creating false intimacy with the guy, as though they’re boys and/or they just finished sucking Cohen off. For her part, Mrs. Cohen is also said to be irked by the moniker, as she finds it childish. Having said all that, I’ve never taken someone to task for the offense* and, presumably, the Missus hasn’t either or at least not in the spectacular form demonstrated by Cohen’s lawyer. Earlier this year, the SAC Capital manger sat for two days of deposition, which was recently unsealed, as part of a lawsuit filed in 2006 by Canadian insurer Fairfax Financial against a group of hedge funds that included SAC. At one point, Fairfax’s lawyer Michael Bowe addresses Cohen as “Stevie,” and in response, Martin Klotz, the attorney representing Steve and SAC, goes absolutely ape shit. Continue reading »
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Posted in:
Hedge Funds
Steve Cohen To Make Sure TriState Area Superbowl Will Cause All Other Super Bowls To Bow Down Before It In Awe
By Bess Levin
Yes, Super Bowl XLVIII is a long way off. Yes, it’s hard to get jazzed about a game for which we have no idea who will be playing. Yes, you might actually freeze your ass off. While all of those things may be true, yesterday brought news that should have you salivating for 2014. Because yesterday, we found out that that SB? Stands to be the best one ever, based on a host committee that includes (among others such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citi, BlackRock and Paul Tudor Jones): SAC Capital. While the official list cites SAC president Tom “Silver Fox” Conheeney as its point man on the project, make no mistake that Steve Cohen will be heavily involved, no doubt going above and beyond the responsibilities of a typical host. Obviously, Cohen has a lot on the line here, given that his venerable initials are on the thing. Therefore, in an effort to make sure SAC isn’t associated with a sack-freezing joke, he’ll be taking the following steps to ensure the game is a smash hit. Continue reading »
An artist's rendering
Back in January, SAC Capital amassed a 5.3 percent stake in Domino’s Pizza, making it the fifth largest investor, at 3.2 million shares. While Cohen didn’t have any plans to meddle with management, behind the scenes he did do his part to enhance the brand, not only in an attempt to maximize profits but out of a love for bread, sauce and cheese. Little tweaks included: use of the DPZamboni as the standard delivery vehicle (it can do 150 on 95), product placement that involved getting Domino’s featured in a few pizza delivery-boy themed pornos, and tasking SAC employees with slapping slices out of the hands of anyone seen eating a competitor, putting a finger in their face and warning “that’s one” (after one you don’t want to know what happens). Things were good. REALLY good. They were double penetrating the market and Steve had big plans for the future. Unfortunately, SC’s had to significantly reduce his stake over the last few months, after what we’re assuming was a difference of opinion based on this: Continue reading »
Healthcare Team May Be Latest Creatures Suspended In Formaldehyde And Put On Display In SAC Capital Lobby
By Bess Levin
SAC Capital Advisors may have a one-day paper loss of about $196 million from its stake in Dendreon Corp. (DNDN), the drugmaker that plunged the most ever after it withdrew its 2011 revenue estimate. SAC Capital owned 8.2 million shares of Seattle-based Dendreon as of March 31, making it the biggest shareholder, according to a regulatory filing. Dendreon fell 67 percent, or $23.87, to $11.97 at 3:15 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading, the largest decline since its initial public offering in June 2000. [Bloomberg]
Unfortunate news for the legions of Steve Cohen groupies dying to have the hedge fund manager sign their tits and/or invest** with SAC Capital– despite some wishful thinking by a few haters in the industry that he’d be negatively affected by the Feds going after a few pissant former employees for insider trading, investors have continued to throw money at the Big Guy, so much so that he’s going to have to break a few hearts. Continue reading »
Steve Cohen has said numerous times that Fairfax Financial is up to some unsavory stuff in its neverending lawsuit against every hedge fund shorting the Canadian insurer’s stock in 2009. You might think that convincing his ex-wife to sue him for control of SAC Capital was bad enough, but an even shadier stunt: Fairfax supposedly paid investigators to pretend to be hedge fund managers looking for some inside information from SAC’s co-defendants while their lawyers weren’t looking.
Continue reading »
