- Loeb is seeking to hijack London-listed TPIL and invest its capital elsewhere
Labour efforts to bulldoze the rules governing listed London companies are designed to encourage growth and bolster the London Stock Exchange.
Sometimes government should question what it has wished for. Regulatory changes make it easier for sharpshooting hedge funds to undermine the rights of minority investors.
Magnate Dan Loeb, of US-based Third Point – supported by activist Boaz Weinstein of Saba infamy – is seeking to do just that at British-listed fund Third Point Investors Limited (TPIL).
Loeb and his associates will this week seek approval at an extraordinary general meeting to hijack TPIL and its shareholders and inject its £500million of capital into Third Point-controlled reinsurance fund Malibu, based in the Cayman Islands.
The transaction, approved by a Loeb-dominated TPIL board, has outraged asset managers at AVI, Evelyn Partners, Metage Capital, Staude Capital and Almitas Capital.
Advisers say the funds are being ‘mugged’ and capital funds managed on behalf of clients, including retail investors, are at risk of being trapped in the Caymans.

Dan Loeb, of US-based Third Point, is seeking to hijack British-listed fund Third Point Investors Limited (TPIL).
Prior to the change in listing rules, a related party transaction, such as that proposed by Loeb, would have required an independent poll.
That would have prevented Third Point from using its own voting shares to railroad a contentious deal.
Voting advisory group ISS recommends votes against eight resolutions at the EGM designed to usher through the change. A note from JPMorgan Cazenove describes the proposals as ‘sub-optimal’.
Dissenting investors note that most of the existing board members will join the Malibu reinsurance vehicle and have access to better remuneration of between £0.5m and £1.5m as well as share incentives.
If Dan Loeb were prevented from exercising his votes at the special meeting this week, the transaction would be defeated by the rebels currently speaking for around 24pc of the stock.
Investors are blindly being led into Malibu without any prospectus or business plan from what is an unproven enterprise.
The intention of changes to the listing regulations was to encourage equity investment in Britain. Instead, relaxed rules offer ruthless hedge funds the opportunity to run roughshod over shareholder rights.
Loeb’s assault must be opposed.
Buyout risks
Rolls-Royce finance director Helen McCabe describes the offload of the group’s £4.3billion UK pension fund, servicing 36,000 present and former workers, to the Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC) as a ‘win-win’.
Certainly, it relieves the Rolls Royce balance sheet of a big liability and the group of a responsibility, which potentially could be a distraction to core engineering operations. PIC is respectable enough.
But it lacks some of the transparency and reputation of insurance giants Legal & General and Aviva – two leaders in pension buyouts.
What the Rolls-Royce announcement doesn’t say is that PIC is being bought by Athora for £5.7billion.
Headed by former Prudential chief executive Mike Wells, Athora would appear to be in good hands. It doesn’t end there.
Athora is an offshoot of US hedge fund Apollo which holds a 25 per cent ‘strategic’ stake and chooses five members of the board.
Apollo was founded by Leon Black who stepped down in 2021 after it was revealed that he had entrusted some £118million of funds to the care of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The stain is behind Apollo. But it should be remembered that the Bank of England in its July Financial Stability Report warned of ‘key vulnerabilities’ associated with ‘high leverage’ in private markets, especially for insurers and reinsurers.
Maybe not such a win after all.
Bejewelled sale
Aficionados of the BBC’s Antiques Road Show will be more than aware of the flushes and weak knees which infect even the most phlegmatic of dealers when jewellery fabricated by Faberge turns up.
Tech entrepreneur Sergei Mosunov has gone one better by snapping up the whole shebang for £37million from miner Gemfields.
Over the decades, the St Petersburg connection has faded. The collection is designed in Britain and made where craftsmanship is alive, in Switzerland and Italy.
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This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .