market folly

Somehow all of our posts are not being published and we do apologize for this inconvenience. Hopefully we have remedied this matter and we are going through to make sure all of the content is now live. This particular update focuses on all things Jana Partners. Barry Rosenstein's hedge fund has been quite busy with numerous SEC filings. We'll start with the most recent and then work our way back.

In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, hedge fund Jana Partners has disclosed sales of shares of Convergys (CVG) on June 11th and 12th, 2009. They sold at prices of $9.53, $9.52, and $9.25, with the bulk of their sale coming at $9.25. In total, they sold 233,967 shares and now own 10,362,185 shares. They had also filed a prior Form 4 which detailed other sales of CVG shares on May 28th & 29th, as well as June 1st, 2009. The number referenced above is the most current share count. Jana owns 10,362,185 shares of CVG currently after all the sales have been tallied. Such a massive amount of sales also triggered their filing of an amended 13D on June 1st as well. It appears as if Barry Rosenstein's firm is eager to reduce their position size here.

In terms of other recent activity, we also recently noted Jana's 13G filing on Immucor (BLUD). So, after all this time, Jana appears to be alive and well and buying stocks. This all comes after Barry Rosenstein's hedge fund had a rough 2008 and apparently received redemption requests for a significant amount of their capital (20-30%). They were forced to set aside illiquid positions in an attempt to meet all the requests. But, it appears as if they have survived. We'll be checking in on the rest of their portfolio in our hedge fund portfolio tracking series after skipping them last go-round due to the uncertainty swirling around the fund.

In the past, we had covered some of Jana's other SEC filings. Jana was founded in 2001 by Barry Rosenstein 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. Jana has returned 20.9% each year annualized from 2001 til 2007. Rosenstein sees Jana's future in a strategy that uses management adjustments to force change at companies, which in turn can send shares higher. And, hopefully that strategy changes things for the better, as 2008 was a rough year for them.

Taken from Google Finance, Convergys is "engaged in relationship management. It has three segments: Customer Management, which provides agent-assisted services, automated self-service and technology solutions; Information Management, which provides business support system and operational support system (BSS/OSS) solutions, and Human Resources (HR) Management, which provides global human resource business process outsourcing (HR BPO) solutions."