“Everybody wants to meet with me now. I don’t know why. They didn’t want to before,” Gundlach, 53, said. “I guess they’re curious. Who is this guy? That kind of thing.”

Gundlach was fired from his old shop, the TCW Group Inc, in a dispute that led to a lawsuit, a trial and a settlement.

DoubleLine’s assets under management of $60 billion have tripled since the December 29, 2011 settlement with TCW, the terms of which were not made public. Many of his closest associates left TCW to help set up DoubleLine and his firm has been successful in continuing to attract former employees.

Source: Reuters

Many investors pore over these notifications in the belief that the big fish have special insight into what’s working and what’s not in markets. After all, they became big fish somehow, right?

This past quarter the whales made a number of moves ranging from macro bets to individual stock moves and commodity plays. Some of the more notable moves are categorized and summarized in the following slideshow.

Investors be warned though. Because of reporting lags, the information regarding whale moves is somewhat dated. The first quarter ended March 31. One or all of these money mavens may have already changed their position. And whales aren’t always right or may lead you astray. Captain Ahab chased a whale and look where that took him.

Source: CNBC

The deal is among the largest struck for a residence in Manhattan. Previously, the largest closing to date was the $88 million penthouse sale of former Citigroup Chief Executive Sandy Weill’s penthouse to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev’s daughter, according to several real-estate agents.

When the deal closes, Mr. Ackman, whose Pershing Square Capital Management has made big bets on companies like J.C. PenneyJCP -4.15% and against Herbalife, would be part of a group that owns the 75th and 76th floors of One57, a new luxury tower overlooking Central Park. The 13,554-square-foot condo has a two-story-high, 51-foot-wide glass enclosed “winter garden” with a curved

Source: WSJ

Mr. Loeb’s hedge fund, Third Point, disclosed in a filing on Wednesday that it had sold its 7.8 million shares in Morgan Stanley during the first quarter of this year, not long after accumulating the stake. An activist investor, Mr. Loeb had taken aim at the compensation of Morgan Stanley’s board members.

Third Point – which this week called for a breakup of Sony – likely made money on its Morgan Stanley investment. Shares of Morgan Stanley rose 15 percent in the first quarter to $21.98 a share. The hedge fund had bought shares at an average of price of $16.77 in the fourth quarter of last year.

Source: DealBook

Since going public in highly anticipated IPOs in 2011, Groupon and Zynga have struggled. Groupon shares are down roughly 65% from its IPO price of $20 per share, while Zynga is down about 66% from its IPO price of $10.

Groupon’s problem? It went on a spending spree, buying companies and hiring sales staff even as growth slowed. The stock price fell, resulting in the firing earlier this year of one of the company’s founders and its CEO, Andrew Mason. On the bright side, earlier this month, Groupon reported better-than-expected earnings, which rose 7.5%. The company is focusing more on the local market, allowing consumers to search for deals in their area, which helps its mobile phone strategy.

As for Zynga, its game Farmville has been somewhat of a one-hit wonder for the company. Lately, though, Zynga has zoomed in on its mobile strategy while reducing its reliance on Facebook as a platform for its games. In April, its shares rose after the company launched an online gambling site in the UK that allows players to use real money.

Source: Quartz

Big money on Wall Street translates into big donations for the Robin Hood Foundation, a poverty-fighting non-profit organization advised by some of Wall Street’s top hedge fund managers.

The Foundation raised $80.7 million at its annual gala Monday night, including $25 million from two anonymous donors. The total haul was up 33% from the $59 million generated last year, and is a staggering increase of 72% from 2011, when the gala raised $47 million.

Fundraising at this gala is often considered a bellwether for what the top titans of Wall Street expect to earn.

As its Robin Hood name implies, many of the top donors to the foundation are some of the wealthiest hedge fund managers and bankers on Wall Street. Money raised from its year-round fundraising efforts and its annual gala is used to further the foundation’s mission of fighting poverty among children in New

Source: CNNMoney

Its owner isn’t a state utility or an energy giant. It is Blackstone Group LP, best known for corporate takeovers.

The private-equity firm built the dam with partners and has a contract with energy-hungry Uganda to sell it power at rates that ensure profits for Blackstone for years to come.

The project, fraught with holdups that included a pirate hijacking and rituals to appease spirits before flooding an island, has little in common with the debt-fueled billion-dollar buyouts Blackstone helped popularize.

Source: YahooFinance

“There better be a true [Fed] taper or else you might be back into the last half of 1999,” Tepper said in a “Squawk Box” interview. “So like guys that are short, they better have a shovel to get themselves out of the grave.”

“If the Fed doesn’t taper back, we’re going to get into this hyper-drive market,” he explained. “It’s a backwards argument. To keep the markets going up at a steady pace the Fed has to taper back.”

He thinks a natural path will develop for the Fed to exit its accommodative stance.

Source: CNBC

The figure was announced after Paul Tudor Jones, of Tudor Investment Corp. bought Williams’s tie for $10,000 — kicking off a pledge drive to meet a $25 million challenge grant offered by non-board members of the nonprofit.

Williams directed the 4,200 guests at the Jacob K. Javits Center to send an e-mail to give@rh.org. (The total soon climbed past $80 million.) Then the evening moved smoothly on to Jerry Seinfeld.

“You’re trying to remember who’s here,” Seinfeld said, “so you can tell people tomorrow and make people feel bad tomorrow.”

Scattered around the sprawling venue were Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google Inc. (GOOG); model Karlie Kloss;David Tepper of Appaloosa Management LP; Steve Kuhn of Pine River Capital Management LP; and Boaz Weinstein of SABA Capital Management LP. At one table you could find Jim Simons of Renaissance Technologies LLC, Kenneth Langone of Invemed Associates Inc., Justin Timberlake, Jessica Biel, Eli Manning and Jones.

Source: Bloomberg

When he starting out as a hedge fund manager in the 1990s, Dan Loeb used the nickname Mr Pink while visiting investor chat rooms. It was a reference to the character in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs, who gets away with the diamonds, leaving his co-conspirators dying in a warehouse.

The name has stuck and for good reason: billionaire Loeb has made a habit of getting away with the diamonds. One of Wall Street’s most successful investors, he even managed to land a $500m (£326m) windfall from the Greek debt buyback deal.

Famed for his acerbic attacks on corporate boards, he has branded spineless board members as country-club-frequenting “socialites” and people that inherit their shareholdings as members of “The Lucky Sperm Club”, while slamming chief executives as chief value destroyers, or CVDs.

Source: TheGuardian