market folly

We have a trifecta of SEC filings to cover regarding Barry Rosenstein's hedge fund Jana Partners in this update. While they are three separate filings, they all relate to Jana's position in Convergys (CVG). So, let's dive right in as Jana Partners has filed 2 Form 4's and 1 amended 13D. The main thing to take away here is that they continue to sell shares of CVG. The first Form 4 shows them selling shares on August 3rd, 4th, and 5th at prices ranging from $10.21 to $10.45 per share. In total, they sold 1,989,295 shares in that filing. In an additional Form 4, we see that they sold another 236,095 shares on August 6th, with the bulk of the sale at $10.19 per share. Sandwiched in between the two Form 4 filings was an amended 13D that shows Jana holding a 6.6% ownership stake in Convergys. After all is said and done, they now are left with 8,118,418 shares of CVG. We covered Jana's initial 13D filing back in February and detailed the numerous times they've sold CVG shares as well.

Other notable activity out of Jana includes selling more Coleman Cable (CCIX). Lastly, we've also highlighted their activity in PRG-Schultz and Immucor. These moves all come after Jana saw redemption requests for around 30% of their assets, which can obviously present some problems. They have set aside illiquid positions and have been re-shuffling things for a few months now. Barry Rosenstein uses long/short and market neutral strategies and he has seen 20.9% annualized returns from 2001 to 2007 at his hedge fund. However, he sees Jana's future as an evolution of strategy to a more activist focus where he can institute change at companies through a focus on management. While we haven't covered Barry Rosenstein's firm yet in our hedge fund portfolio tracking series, we will be doing so shortly so be on the lookout. In that update, we will be going over the most recent changes to their entire portfolio of long US equities.

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."