market folly

In a 13D filing made with the SEC on October 21st, hedge fund Jana Partners disclosed that they have a 13.52% stake in Convergys (CVG). They now own 16,468,399 shares of CVG. This is an increase from their 10.5 million shares they disclosed in the previous filing which detailed positions as of June 30, 2008. The 13D filing notes that the purchase of these shares was spread out on various days from September 17th, 2008 to October 16th, 2008, at prices ranging from $15.50 to $10.73.

Managed by Barry Rosenstein, Jana was founded in 2001 and typically employs activist, market neutral, and long/short equity strategies in public equity markets. Rosenstein received his BS from Lehigh University and his MBA from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Alpha magazine ranks Jana #79 in their hedge fund rankings. Jana Partners was -9% for the month of September, and find themselves -14.7% for the year, as I noted in my hedge fund performance update. Also, we recently noted that Jana has taken a 5.7% stake in Hayes Lemmerz (HAYZ).

Taken from Google Finance, CVG is "a global player in relationship management. The Company provides its clients with solutions to support their customers (Customer Solutions) and employees (human resource (HR) Solutions). It has three segments: Customer Management, which provides outsourced customer care solutions, as well as professional and consulting services to in-house customer care operations; Information Management, which provides convergent rating, charging and billing solutions for the global communications industry, and Human Resources Management, which provides human resource business process outsourcing (HR BPO) solutions and learning solutions."