Exelon Claims 46% of NRG Shares in Hostile Tender Offer

January 7, 2009, 2:16 pm

The battle between Exelon and NRG heated up on Wednesday, after Exelon said that it has garnered nearly 46 percent of its fellow power company’s stock through a hostile tender offer.

At the close of business on Tuesday, NRG shareholders tendered 106.3 million shares, representing 45.6 percent of the Princeton, N.J. power generator’s stock. Exelon said it was extending the offer to 5 p.m. on Feb. 25, after it was set to expire on Tuesday. MORE »

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Austria’s ‘Woman on Wall Street’ Now Out of Sight

January 7, 2009, 7:15 am

With an aggressive style that stood out in the staid world of Austrian banking even more than her bouffant red wig, Sonja Kohn made few friends gathering billions for Bernard L. Madoff from wealthy investors in Russia and across Europe.

Now, she has even fewer, The New York Times’s Nelson D. Schwartz and Julia Werdigier write. Mrs. Kohn has dropped out of sight, leaving the firm she founded, Bank Medici, in the hands of Austrian regulators, who took it over last week. MORE »

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I.P.O. Chill May Last Through 2010, Analysts Say

January 7, 2009, 2:14 pm

The frozen market for initial public offerings won’t thaw in 2009 — or even the year after that, according to Bernstein Research. Bernstein’s analysts say they do not expect the market for new stock sales to bottom out until 2010 at the earliest, followed by a modest recovery.

If they are right, the result will be less fees for underwriters like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and hard times for companies and venture investors that have been patiently waiting to cash out by going public.

Companies tend to go public when stock markets are rising, volatility is low and equity fund flows are healthy. That clearly was not the case in 2008, as the global credit crisis roiled world markets and sent investors fleeing to the sidelines. MORE »

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Sun Capital Shifts Its Focus and Cuts Back

January 7, 2009, 5:51 pm

In the latest sign of trouble in the alternative investment world, Florida-based Sun Capital Partners has decided to refocus its $1.3 billion internal hedge fund after suffering losses on several investments. The fund will now focus solely on debt investments instead of both debt and equities.

Sun Capital, which manages more than $10 billion in assets mostly through private equity funds, is also laying off about 23 employees, or 10 percent of its work force, including the head of its New York office.

“We expect our organization to continue to grow in the coming years as it has done each year of our existence,” a spokesman for the firm said in a statement. “After taking into consideration this reduction in force, we have a larger team today than we had at the start of 2008.” MORE »

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Losses for V.C. Investors Who Want Out

January 7, 2009, 9:50 am

From Claire Cain Miller at Bits:

Investors in venture capital and private equity funds who want out are discovering that their stakes are worth less than they paid for them.

As returns on venture capital investments sour and investors’ wealth deteriorates, some of these investors — the universities, foundations and pension funds known as limited partners — have been unloading their stakes in the funds. When they decide they can no longer supply the money they had previously committed, they sell their stakes at a discount to what is known as a secondary firm. MORE »

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Ares Hires Merrill Leveraged Finance Executive

January 7, 2009, 1:48 pm

Ares Management said on Wednesday that it has hired Greg Margolies, a former Merrill Lynch leveraged finance executive, as the head of the investment firm’s capital markets group.

At Merrill, Mr. Margolies was a managing director and head of the securities firm’s global leveraged finance and capital commitments. He previously worked at Deutsche Bank, the Carlyle Group and Citibank. MORE »

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Learning From G.E. as Spin Season Approaches

January 7, 2009, 5:00 pm

We are only a few days into January, which means the Year-End Spin Season will soon be upon us, with the traditional parade of fourth-quarter earnings conference calls and annual investor update meetings.

This year’s presentations will be far more revealing than prior years… even if, on the surface, they are not. Because while it might be tempting to dismiss the upcoming spiels from management as superficial spin, the presentations will actually expose just how well the bosses have their heads around the situation. In other words, you can’t talk about your business with clarity unless you’ve thought about your business clearly. And the more volatile the environment, the harder it is to fake.

If you’re looking for advance clues on how the coming season will play out, you may want to glance back at how General Electric and its chief executive, Jeffrey R. Immelt, handled the company’s annual investor update just before the holidays. MORE »

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